Good Riddance
by RagingSerenity
Summary: A mysterious murder victim. A dark, painful secret. A looming shadow. And in the middle of it a cop and a writer, trying to make it out alive.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Castle. Pity, really :p. Just thought I'd put this here 'cause everyone does, though it should be obvious that I don't own a bit of it.**

**A/N: This is my first story for Castle (and the first story I've ever published), so I'm quite nervous. Although I've been assured that it's quite good so far… Anyway. I've seen people with a habit for really long author's notes, especially in the beginning, and while I find those quite adorable to read, I'll try to refrain from adopting that habit :p.**

**I also am not used to everything that comes along with publishing a story (as I'm noticing just now), for example providing the setting xD. Here goes:**

**Starts (obviously, after you read it) on January 2nd, 2012, after _Cuffed_ and before _Till Death do Us Part_. Everything up to that point is as we know it, onwards it will (again, obviously) not match the show's progress.**

**Just to say it: since this is my first story, reviews are highly appreciated. Constructive criticism preferred though :). Thanks.**

* * *

><p><em>Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road<em>

"Yo Beckett!"

"Esposito. Where's the body?"

"Inside."

"Anything you wanna tell me?"

A shrug. "We don't know much yet." Raised eyebrows. "Go ask Lanie."

"I will."

Detective Beckett lowered her eyebrows back to normal as she stepped past her colleague Javier Esposito who had, as usual, arrived at the crime scene before her. Privilege of being on call, she thought.

"Hey Beckett," he called after her, "where's Castle?"

She stopped, and turned halfway back to him. "I called, but he didn't pick up. My guess is he's still hung over from the party."

"Really? Man, that was two days ago!"

"Yeah, well, your guess is as good as mine." With that, she turned back and ducked under the yellow police tape running across the door of the old bowling alley.

Lighting inside was murky at best; with the building having not been used for at least ten years – more like twenty, the way it smells here, she thought – nobody had bothered to replace any of the faulty neon tubes that had used to bathe the interior in a bright light.

The owner had run out of money and eventually had been forced to sell the business to a bank, which had subsequently shut everything down and let the place go to waste. That was the gist of Detective Ryan's already concise report on the crime scene.

"Please tell me you know more about the victim than Esposito," Beckett called across the lane to where Dr Parish was kneeling between toppled bowling pins, a closed body bag beside her.

"Good morning to you too, Beckett," the ME responded, a hint of irritation in her voice, "and as to the victim, what did he tell you?"

"Come on…" the detective replied, refraining from rolling her eyes only because of her friend's don't-mess-with-me-look. "He said we don't know much. Do we?"

The ME made a face. "_Essentially_," she said, putting a lot more emphasis on the word than necessary, "that's true. White, male, probably average height_,_ _maybe_ gray hair._"_ She sighed. "Someone went out of his way to mask both the victim's identity and the cause of death."

Beckett's eyebrows went up at that. "Meaning?"

"Meaning," Dr Parish said, "that his whole body looks like someone used him as a bowling pin. I'd be surprised if there was any part of his body that isn't bloody, or any bone that wasn't broken. _And_ on top of that, he's completely," she paused for effect, "naked."

"As in 'someone took his clothes'?"

"Precisely. At first glance I couldn't find any fibers or other remains of clothes in his wounds, which would have to be there if he had any on while he was turned into…"

"Yeah, thanks, Lanie," Beckett interrupted, "I really don't need the image."

"Suit yourself. I should be able to give you more once I have him on my table."

"So no time of death yet?"

"Beckett, that guy has been reduced to…" Lanie interrupted herself at the detective's warning look, "…anyway, no, with the _state_ he is in, I won't say anything before I've had him on. My. Table."

"Right. Thanks. Bye Lanie."

A sigh was the doctor's only response, while Kate Beckett made her way back across the lane, where fellow detectives Ryan and Esposito were waiting for her.

"This is creepy, right?" Esposito said when Beckett had reached them. Answering to her quizzical look he added, "I mean, we've had a naked victim because his clothes would have led us straight to the killer. Which they did anyway, because they were removed after he was shot.

"And then we've had burned fingertips because the killer wanted to prevent us from finding out the vic's identity. But this… this is a whole new level. A man, beaten to within an inch of his life, maybe with a bowling ball, and stripped before…"

To his right, his partner Detective Ryan made a gagging sound. "Thanks man, I've just had breakfast, and I'd like to keep it down."

Esposito shook his head at Ryan's squeamishness but kept his comment to himself.

"What do we have on this place?" Beckett asked, trying to focus on what they could do until Lanie could provide them with more information on the victim. "Witnesses, tire tracks in the parking lot, surveillance cameras…?"

"Nada," Esposito said.

"The next neighbors live over a block away, plus this place has been closed for ten years so nobody ever comes even near it any more. The few parking spaces in front are clear, and the lot in back has turned into a giant pile of waste over the years. You don't wanna go in there," Ryan reported, without even checking his notes.

"Wouldn't that be an ideal place to dump the murder weapon?"

"Maybe, but we don't even know what it is, or if there even _is_ a murder weapon. The way this guy looks, he's probably been beaten to death," Esposito interjected, "And we checked, there are only two ways to access the parking lot, the gate for the cars and a big steel door in here. Both were locked and barred and had so much dust on them that they couldn't have been opened recently."

"_Back_ to surveillance," Ryan grumbled, "this whole area doesn't have any. The closest cameras I could find are the traffic cameras two blocks down from here, and those in the subway station one block up."

"If this place is so out of the way for everyone, how did anyone even find the body?"

"Coincidence," Ryan said, "the bank that bought and shut down this place years ago wanted to get it sized up to see how much they could make by selling it. The guy they sent here, a Mr Ted Willsburgh, discovered the body when he went in and turned on the lights."

"The lights. In an abandoned bowling alley."

"Yes, the bank had the building reconnected to the power line just for the occasion."

"So to sum this up," Detective Beckett said, raising her eyebrows once more, "right now we have nothing. Not even an approximate time of death."

"Yeah, pretty much," Esposito said, Ryan nodding along.

"Great," Beckett muttered. She paused for a moment, thinking her options through, before issuing her orders. "Let's talk to those neighbors you mentioned, find out if anyone was up and walking around here last night… Or make that last couple of nights. The body's not started decaying yet, so unless someone put him on ice, he can't have been dead for more than a week."

"On it," Esposito replied, gesturing to two uniformed officers on his way out.

"Ryan, get the surveillance footage from those traffic cameras and the subway station for the last week, just so that we have them when we know what we're looking for."

"Okay." He turned to leave, then turned back and asked, "And what are you gonna do?"

"I'll go get Castle," Beckett said, slightly grimacing, "we need something to go on, and I'll kill you if you tell him this, but even his crazy theories are better than the nothing we have right now."

Ryan just smiled, then turned to leave while fishing for his cell phone.

* * *

><p>Richard Castle sat on the couch in his loft, eyes closed and head lying on the back of the couch. The empty glass sitting on the coffee table showed remnants of dissolved Aspirin, a tribute to the monstrous headache that was only just beginning to dissipate.<p>

'Maybe movie night on New Year's Day wasn't such a great idea,' he thought. Nonetheless, Alexis was going to go to college in spring, and he was determined to use every chance he got to spend time with his little girl, to fill the pool of memories in which he could drown himself once she'd be gone.

Thankfully–really? Thankfully?–the doorbell's chime stopped this very miserable train of thought before it could win any more ground, setting up to grow to truly epic proportions… He really needed to get some control over his over imaginative mind, or at least he should channel it toward writing.

The second chime snapped him out of his reverie, making him realize that he was utterly alone. Martha had taken Alexis to do some New Years Shopping, and while Rick wondered where his daughter was getting the energy for a whole day of shopping from, he was glad to be able to relax undisturbed. Until now.

Retying his robe, he made his way to the door. "Beckett!" he called out in surprise when he opened the door and found the detective standing on the other side. "What are you doing here?" When he saw her smirk, he wanted to smacked himself. "Not that I don't enjoy your company," he amended, "but you could've called." He was dimly aware that his headache had now completely receded. At last.

"You know," she began, "I did call you. Over two hours ago. But by the looks of it, you were still asleep then."

A half-smirk accompanied the last remark, which was hanging somewhere between a statement and a question.

"Uh, yeah, I probably was," he said, stepping aside, "Movie night with Alexis last night. Got a little late… Do you want to come in?"

"Thank you," Beckett replied, moving past him, then turning to face him after he closed the door behind them.

"Can I get you anything?" Castle asked, gesturing to the couch and chairs.

"No, thanks," she responded, then said, "there's a body."

He looked at her for a long moment, focusing his eyes on hers. "And?" he asked when he felt that she was about to start fidgeting.

"And," she took a deep breath, "we have nothing. So far", she amended.

"Nothing," he echoed, irritation creeping into his features. "But you said there's a body, so you can't have _nothing_."

"Okay, so we don't have _nothing_, but all we have is the body. No ID, no witnesses, not even a definitive cause _or_ time of death," she rattled off the few facts she had. Admitting the current state–what _state_ exactly?–the investigation was stuck in made her feel frustrated.

"Well, then you have next to nothing," he acceded, then, raising an eyebrow, asked, "Then what do you want me to do?"

She bit her lip. "I have Ryan and Esposito running down the usual stuff, although that probably won't get us anywhere right now." She paused, and he waited patiently for her to continue. She looked around once before settling her gaze on him again. "I'd like to hear one of your theories, Castle. We really haven't anything to go on, and I thought maybe you had an idea…"

He felt his face split into a grin at the hopeful expression in her eyes, that he wasn't altogether sure she herself knew was there. "Tell you what," he said, "I'll just go shower and get dressed, and then you tell me all you know in the car and I'll see what pops up in my head."

Beckett nodded her agreement, and Castle went for his bedroom. "Make yourself at home," he called over his shoulder, "you know where the coffee maker is."

* * *

><p>When Richard Castle emerged from his bedroom twenty minutes later, he was freshly showered, shaved and dressed. Also, he found his partner lounging in one of his armchairs, boots neatly placed on the floor next to the chair, an almost empty mug of coffee in her hands.<p>

"Took you long enough," Beckett said without looking up, her smirk practically audible. She reached over to the table and picked up a traveling mug, handing it over her shoulder to him. "Here you go."

Castle hummed in appreciation, taking in the scent of caffeine wafting from the small sipping hole. "Thanks," he murmured, taking a sip of the hot liquid. Immediately the drink's invigorating effects took action, kicking this morning's headache further back into the recesses of his memory.

"Can we get going?" Beckett asked, busying herself with pulling her boots on after having set down her now empty mug on the table. She turned her head to look at him, raising an eyebrow. "Or does the gentleman require another few minutes to compose himself?"

In lieu of an answer, he walked over to the hall closet, putting on his shoes and donning his coat. When he gathered his keys and opened the door, she slipped around him and went ahead to call the lift.

They spent the whole ride down in silence. Castle's irritation was momentarily replaced by violent shivers as they stepped out of his building's front door and where immediately hit by the freezing January wind.

Once they were settled inside her car, Castle's teeth were still chattering slightly, though Beckett assumed that was just for effect. She buckled her seat belt, then began to back the car out of the parking spot while opening her mouth to start briefing Castle on the other facts about the new case.

"So, when are you gonna tell me the rest?" he asked, beating her to it.

She closed her mouth, then opened it again. "Right now, actually. Why? You said 'tell me all you know _in the car_'."

"You know I didn't mean that literally. And since when do you actually listen to me?"

He sounded playful, so she went along. Hell, she could (and would) use any distraction from this case's frustration that presented itself. "I listen to you all the time. Don't have much choice, you know, with you following me around and talking all the time."

"That's _not_ what I meant." This time, he didn't sound so playful any more.

"No, it's not," she conceded.

"So?" he prompted after a minute of silence.

"So…," she echoed, drawing the word out, hoping to escape his prodding. Of course, part of her mind was well aware that it was Castle she was talking to, and she would never escape his questions with anything short of going ballistic on him, and the situation certainly didn't warrant extreme measures.

"Are you gonna tell me or not?" he asked, clearly not giving her any chance to squirm her way out. But, thinking a moment, she recognized that he had actually offered her a way out, although maybe inadvertently.

"Alright. The body was found this morning in an abandoned bowling alley. All we know is that it's a white male of average height. He was completely naked, and beaten to a pulp," she said, grimacing at the last part. "Literally," she added.

Castle's eyebrows went up, but he kept silent, so she went on, "His face was so badly beaten that it's going to be hard to identify him. We're hoping for prints or DNA… or that Lanie can work a miracle.

"There are no witnesses, with nobody having come near the place in the last five years at least and the nearest neighbors living a good block away. Esposito is talking to them, but I doubt anything will turn up. There are no surveillance cameras around, the closest being traffic cameras two blocks away and some in a subway station, one block in opposite direction. Ryan's pulling them in, but there's the problem…"

"…That you don't have a time of death," he interjected.

She nodded. "Right. When a bank bought the building ten years ago, they shut the whole thing down and kept it that way. Now they need money, and figured they'd check out their property. One of their people came around to the place this morning, and found the body.

"Right now we have a time frame of about a week, given that the body hasn't started decomposing yet. But with the cold weather, it might be longer. Or shorter. Again, we have to hope for Lanie to find anything."

They spent the rest of the ride to the precinct in silence. Though Beckett was eager to hear Castle's theories on the case–although, face it, she'd never put it in quite those words–she recognized that pushing him wouldn't help. He would eventually come up with something. There was no guarantee that it would actually help, she knew, but she told herself that it couldn't be any worse than having nothing.

The only time she prompted him was when they got out of the car in the precinct's basement garage. "Any ideas yet?" she asked, while they were making their way over to the lift.

"Nope," he said, shaking his head and appearing deep in thought. So deep in fact that he didn't seem to notice that he was the first to enter the elevator, and also the first to leave it on their floor.

They hadn't quite reached her desk when a sharp voice called her to attention.

"Detective Beckett. My office, now."

She sighed, then altered her course toward the captain's office. When Castle started to follow her, she turned and stopped him.

"Stay here, okay? I'm just gonna tell her what I told you already, and I don't think your half-baked theories would do anything to improve her mood after I'm finished. Her words, not mine," she added upon seeing his face fall a little. "I wouldn't have gone out of my way to encourage you to develop some if I thought they were nonsense, would I?" She turned back toward Gates' office, stopped and turned halfway back around, a smirk playing across her lips. "Although they mostly are nonsense," she said, but her amusement was clearly audible.

* * *

><p>Kate Beckett was not quite so amused when she left Captain Gates' office only about five minutes later. She had made her report, deflected a couple of incredulous questions and stoically listened to the captain's rant. Her 'new orders' were exactly the same as she would have done on her own, and while it was a little frustrating that Gates was as clueless as she, Beckett reminded herself to be thankful for not having to discuss investigative priorities with her boss.<p>

When she found herself suddenly sitting at her desk, she realized that she must have walked the whole way over pretty much absentmindedly, and it was probably only thanks to the fact that most of the skeleton crew that manned the precinct on the second day of the new year were out somewhere instead of hurrying across the bullpen that she hadn't run into anyone, who probably would've been armed with a cup of coffee…

Coffee. The thought made her cringe inwardly, since the cup she'd had at Castle's place couldn't have been much more than half an hour ago, and yet she was feeling like she hadn't had any at all.

Looking up and around the room, she found the desks of her two fellow detectives still unoccupied, and her cell phone showed no missed calls or new texts, so she decided to give in to her addiction and get herself a fresh fix of caffeine.

It hit her when she got up from her chair. Where was Castle? His chair, next to her desk, was empty. 'Probably making coffee and building theory with the espresso machine,' she thought to herself.

Making her way over to the break room, she noticed a familiar, large frame blocking half a window of the floor's main conference room. The one with the large plasma screen. Abandoning her earlier objective, Beckett walked over and entered the room without knocking, closing the door quietly behind her.

Detective Ryan was sitting at the central table, his pad open and a pen in his hand, poised to take notes. In his other hand he held the remote control, thumb resting on the play/pause button. She followed his gaze to the screen, where she could see surveillance footage from the traffic cameras rolling past at quadruple speed.

To her right, Castle cleared his throat. When she turned toward him, she found a mug of steaming coffee hovering inches away from her face. Muttering a "Thanks", she extracted the cup from his hand and took a swig, marveling once again at the energizing properties of the dark liquid.

"I see you got those tapes," she addressed Ryan.

"Yeah, the guys were fast. This is only the beginning though, from last night. We'll get the rest later, and I figured that since we don't have any leads, I could just as well check the tape for anything suspicious."

Beckett stifled the question of how exactly he would define 'suspicious' under the circumstances. "Any word from Esposito?" she asked instead.

"Nope, nothing yet," came the reply, "either he's been invited for tea by an old lady, or he hasn't found anything and will tell us just that when he gets here."

Hiding her frustration behind another mouthful of coffee, she turned her eyes to Castle, who cocked his head and peered at her curiously.

"How'd it go with Gates?" he asked.

"Eh," she responded, keeping herself from formulating an overly emotional reply, "at the end it was almost a shouting match. Her against the wall." Beckett chuckled, in spite of the situation. "I guess it's even more frustrating when you can't go out on the street and just _do_ something, instead of waiting for news to come to you."

Castle nodded thoughtfully. "Remind me how that's different from our situation right now?"

She snorted. "Thanks for rubbing it in."

"Always a pleasure," he retorted, a silly grin on his face.

Shaking her head, she cut back to the chase. "So, any good theories popped up?"

"Any? _Any?_ There are, like, a thousand, and the problem is that with what little information we have, they're all quite likely. Or un-likely."

"I don't remember that ever having stopped you in the past," she shot back.

"Yeah, well, in those cases you didn't ask me to come up with a theory to build your case on."

Now she was gaping. "For the record," she said firmly, reeling her expression back in, "I never intended to build my investigation on your theory. I was just thinking that you might have an idea that'd help make a bit more sense of this."

"But you did before," he said softly, almost pouting, "I remember cases that _my_ theories cracked wide open. So technically–"

"Technically," she interrupted him, "whenever your theories _'cracked'_"–you could practically hear the air quotes–"a case, they were founded on real evidence, interpreting them in a way we hadn't before. If I'm not mistaken, there's not much hard evidence to base anything on, is there?"

"Then I'm sorry," he resigned, "just tell me why you dragged me here? Since you don't seem to want to hear my theories…"

Beckett sighed deeply. The confusion on his face, the hurt in his voice, together they were rapidly becoming close to unbearable for her already frustrated self. She looked away, only to find Ryan's look darting from her to Castle and back, his face mirroring Castle's confusion, but transmitting concern with his eyes. She dropped her gaze to the floor, studying it.

The quiet stretched out, until she broke it. "Ryan, could you…," she asked without looking up.

His answer came in the sound of a chair being pushed back across the floor, and footsteps coming around the table, then passing her, the door closing quietly in his wake.

Beckett drew the ensuing silence out for a few minutes. Then, as if collecting herself, drawing all of the rampaging frustration back into its cage, she took a deep breath, straightening up and looking at him again. Castle, still standing where he had been when she had snapped at him, was alternating his gaze between the opposite wall and the image frozen on the big screen.

"Castle," she prompted, her voice softer than before, but betraying the strain she was feeling.

His head snapped around, so quickly that it almost seemed involuntary to her. She spoke in a slow, measured voice.

"I'm sorry. I took my frustration out on you, and that was neither fair nor right."

She saw his face light up a little, just for a moment, before concern took over his expression. He inched closer to her, then spoke in a soft voice, "Are you alright?"

Kate Beckett had a hard time keeping herself from showing him an unguarded, un-Beckett-y, adoring smile. The kind that she'd felt crawling on her face when she was looking at him while he didn't see. Like the one she'd let him see, because she couldn't have–_wouldn't_ have–smothered that happiness at finding him alive and well in the bank vault… 'No. Wrong track of mind,' she reprimanded herself. Instead, she quirked the corners of her mouth up in a weird little half-smile and slightly shook her head.

"No, I guess I'm not," she admitted.

"Anything I can do to help?" he asked after another pause.

"No," she replied, "but thank you, Castle. You're here, and I haven't scared you off. Just…just be you, and once we get some more information, I'll be back to my usual."

You're here, and I haven't scared you off. Kate, watch your mouth, she thought.

If Castle had picked up on her wording, he didn't let on. "I'll remind you of that the next time you complain about me," he said, smiling, "In the meantime, we should let Ryan back in here so he can look over the footage some more."

She was about to respond when her phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, she took the call. "Esposito, tell me you have something."

"Speaker," Castle mouthed.

She tapped the button and held her phone out between them.

"–_talked to the neighbors. None of them have heard anything. The building doesn't allow pets, so no dog walkers either. Most walk past the street that leads to the crime scene every day, or pass it in their cars. They all say they've never seen anyone go there, but they don't exactly pay attention either."_

"That can't be right," Castle interjected, "from what you've told me, it's a perfectly intact building, just a little run-down." He heard Esposito mutter something that sounded suspiciously like "A little?", but chose to ignore it.

Beckett picked up his line of thought. "Have you checked the scene for any signs that homeless people might've been there?"

"_CSU found no indicators, as I recall. No signs of forced entry, if you overlook the broken windows. But none of them were completely clear of broken glass, and all those someone could've gotten in through were clear of traces."_

"Damn," Castle muttered.

"So we're still at square one," Beckett said, ignoring him.

"_Looks that way,"_ came Esposito's response.

"Okay, then get back here. We'll wait for the Lanie and the full CSU report, and then we'll see," she told him.

"_Okay. See you,"_ he said, ending the call.

While pocketing her phone, Beckett ran her free hand through her hair, stifling yet another frustrated sigh. Why was this case getting to her so much? She had no explanation, no reason for it. There had been hard cases in the past, specifically one where she didn't even have a body to begin with. But in that case, she'd had a lead. And witnesses.

Reluctantly, she pushed herself off the wall and opened the door. She walked over to Ryan's desk, Castle following in her wake.

"Esposito says the neighbors know nothing,…" she began.

"…,see nothing, hear nothing," her colleague finished for her, eyes fixed on his screen.

"Pretty much," she quipped. "You can have the room back."

He looked up, gauging the general mood, and finding them standing close together, peering down at him, seemed good enough to him. He stood wordlessly, a small nod his only sign of acknowledgment, and went back into the conference room, resuming his screening task.

* * *

><p>Esposito had come in about half an hour after his call, checking his inbox before joining Ryan in the conference room, the pair of them spending the following hours screening surveillance footage.<p>

Beckett had tried clearing away some of her backlogged paperwork, but found that she could hardly concentrate. So she had actually welcomed Castle working to distract her, using every means at his disposal. He started with some crazy apps on his phone, snatching her attention away from the dull forms, then continued to an almost artistic performance of eating M&M's, eliciting an embarrassed chuckle–and a worried glance to Gates' office, whose occupant thankfully was occupied with paperwork.

Castle slipped out around noon, returning a few minutes later with two extremely full bags from the bakery around the corner. He left one of the bags with the boys before ambling over to her desk and, after rooting around the bag, carefully maneuvering a bear claw before her face.

After "lunch", he picked up his thread of distracting work, pestering her with little, meaningless questions, before he set off telling an impromptu short story, which stole her attention so entirely that calling her distracted would have been a gross understatement. They had to stop once, Beckett scrambling for pen and paper and Castle suddenly very interested in his phone, when Gates popped her head out into the bullpen, asking for an update. The answer she received made her notably unhappy, but she miraculously refrained from launching into a tirade.

As soon as the captain's head had vanished, Castle was back on track building his story, leading Beckett off to much less frustrating places.

She vaguely realized that she must've had a silly grin plastered across her face, one that was completely inappropriate given their current investigation, but all this consideration took place in a small section in the far back of her mind, never able to make itself known to her. So she continued listening to him with rapt attention.

The story had just reached a crucial point when her phone rang. They were both so focused on the story that neither registered the first ring, and surprisingly it was Castle who pointed out that her phone was ringing. Beckett inwardly cursed herself for her own lack of focus on her work, and the caller for their impossible timing, as she reached over to pick up the receiver.

"Beckett," she responded, hoping that the call was both related to the case and giving her _some_ sort of lead.

"Hey girl, I _may_ have something for you," came Lanie's voice from the other end of the line.

"We'll be there in a minute," Beckett called, slamming down the receiver. She almost catapulted herself out of her chair, slamming into Castle in the process, as he apparently had risen from his chair a moment before her.

Instead of recoiling or falling down though, they ended up holding on to each other's arms, balancing themselves out. Looking up, Beckett found her own face dangerously close to Castle's, and they shared a look of…something, she wasn't quite sure what it was. She thought she detected some amusement in his eyes…and something else. Something…more serious. If she had to label it, she'd–No. She forced herself to abandon that thought, then stepped away, effectively ending the moment–their moment?

"Let's go, Castle," she said, moving in the direction of the elevator, "Lanie says she's got something for us."

"Coming," he replied, still feeling a little bemused from the unexpected collision.

* * *

><p>Beckett pushed through the doors to the main examination room, using a bit more force than strictly necessary.<p>

"What've you got for us, Lanie?" she called.

"Whoa, girl," the ME replied, "I said I _might_ have something for you."

"That him?" Castle threw in, indicating the body lying on one of the steel tables, covered by a white sheet.

"Yeah," Lanie answered, "that's him." At Beckett's inquiring stare, she went on. "This guy," she said, "was a hell of a lot of work."

"Yeah?" Castle chirped in.

Lanie gave him a look that actually made him want to shrink and hide in a corner.

"Yeah. I've been straightening his broken bones, which took about six hours," Lanie grumbled, "give me a little credit for that, will you?" She missed the almost horrified looks passing between the detective and the writer. "Anyway," she paused, walking over to her desk and picking up the clipboard with her notes. "There was literally not a single unbroken bone in his body. Whoever beat him up did a pretty thorough job. They used a blunt object, probably a metal rod, since I found a few traces of metal in some of the wounds, especially the ones inflicted on his face. As suspected, there were no fibers anywhere in the wounds, which suggests that he was naked when he was beaten up."

"Okay," Beckett cut in, "that's all good, but it won't help us as long as we don't know who he is. Any progress on that?"

By now Lanie had finally registered that Beckett wasn't her usual self and decided to let the interruption slip. "Actually," she said, "I've made some progress toward identifying our John Doe. His prints weren't in the system, and the DNA profile will take a while." She held up her hand to stop the pair from intervening. "I managed to put his face back together. To an extent," she added.

"And?" Beckett prompted.

"And," the ME echoed, removing a photograph from her clipboard, "this is as good as it gets."

Beckett peered closely at the face in the picture. It appeared as that of a middle aged man with a receding line of graying hair and a prominent nose, though it was hard to make out specific features underneath the mass of bruises and fractures.

"Do you have anything on the cause of death?" she asked her friend.

"Probably blunt force trauma," Lanie reported, "but don't pin me down on that. It's just that I found nothing else so far, and most, if not all, of these bruises look like they've been dealt before his death, so I've no idea which one killed him. But I will find it."

Neither of them noticed Castle looking at the picture over Beckett's shoulder, blanching and then suddenly fumbling for his phone, turning away and heading for the door.

"Sorry, I have to go," he called over his shoulder. "Call me when you have news?"

"Sure," Beckett replied, frowning. It wasn't like Castle to just vanish without an explanation… But if something had happened, he would have told her, right? What was there that could knock him off the track like that? Maybe something concerning his family… but surely he would have told her if that were the case. Wouldn't he?

* * *

><p>Rick Castle closed the door to his apartment, leaning back against it. He drew a deep breath, shuddering. He was alone, had called Alexis on his way home to make sure she and her grandmother were still busy shopping. Actually, Alexis had sounded a bit exhausted, but overall fine.<p>

Now, he needed time alone. To think.

He didn't even bother to take of his shoes, or his coat. He dragged himself over to the couch, plopping down on it. Letting out a sigh, he let his head fall backwards to rest on a cushion.

In his mind, there was no doubt. And now he had to tell her.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: so, how'd you like it? Hope it wasn't too bad… Just a little hint, there's this blue button, right down here… :)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Does it really need saying?**

* * *

><p><em>Time takes you by the wrist, directs you where to go<em>

He was still sitting on the couch, still fully dressed, scrubbing his hands over his face. He had to admit that everything had been building up to this. He knew he wouldn't be able to keep this from her forever. Not if he wanted there to be a forever. And yet he had to, or there wouldn't have been so much of a chance at…forever. This was messed up, he knew, and though he blamed himself for large parts of what had happened, he was sure enough that not all of this mess was his fault. _But enough_, he thought.

At last, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He thought about calling her, but dismissed the plan because he didn't trust his voice right then, so he settled on texting.

_Still at work?_

His phone buzzed only a few moments later.

_Yes. What happened?_

She knew him too well…And yet that was what he had yearned for, what he had been working at for the past three years. A bitter smile crept onto his face.

_Can you come over? There's something I need to tell you._

He had barely registered his message being sent off when his phone buzzed once more.

_On my way._

That's where they were. One called, the other came running. Partners. They'd gone through thick and thin together. Been to hell and back. Well, whatever hell they'd faced before would look like a picnic compared to what was coming at them now.

He fought his desire to just sink back into the cushions and wait for the doorbell to ring, standing and removing his shoes and coat, leaving them in a heap behind the couch. He wandered to the kitchen, almost in a daze. He opened the tap and, quite unceremoniously, splashed his face with a handful of cold water. Though distinctly unpleasant, the water did the job of shocking him out of his gloomy mood. At least for the moment.

He dried his face with a dishtowel, then set about to make coffee. Waiting for the coffee maker to finish, his autopilot took control and guided him to his bedroom and into fresh clothes, a pair of deep blue jeans and a white T-shirt.

He'd just finished fixing himself a good-sized cup of coffee when the bell rang. Sighing, he grabbed another mug and filled it quickly, before taking both and making his way to the door. Maybe this wouldn't turn out as terrible as he imagined. She was a smart woman. Dhe might just hear him out and understand his reasons. She… Really? Who was he kidding? This would be worse than trying to make her walk away the first time. Before she'd been shot.

Holding both mugs in one hand, he opened the door.

* * *

><p>It was not like him to just leave without an explanation. Even when his daughter had needed him and his parental instincts had kicked him into emergency mode, he'd still at least mentioned why he was going.<p>

She couldn't help but worry. And on top of the case, worrying about her partner was the last thing she needed. It was closing on nine-thirty pm, and she had just finished sifting through a pile of missing person reports in search of their victim. The boys had done the same, equally unsuccessfully, while the captain had left two hours ago with the order to keep her posted.

Her phone buzzed when she was about to get up and get herself a coffee and another pile of reports.

_Still at work?_

She simultaneously released a breath she'd been holding since his sudden exit and drew in another, holding it. Something was wrong.

_Yes. What happened?_

She had to wait a few moments for his response.

_Can you come over? There's something I need to tell you._

Her next actions were a flurry of movement as she donned her jacket, grabbed her bag and keys and texted him back.

_On my way._

She forced herself to slow down and stop by the break room to tell the boys to go home and get some sleep. When they asked where the sudden hurry came from, she answered, "Castle texted me. I'm going to see what happened earlier."

She had expected more questions, but her two colleagues seemed content with that answer, just nodding and subsequently moving to clear the bullpen, while she went over to the elevator.

She was worrying the whole way to his apartment. Rationally she knew that nothing horrible could have happened, because he would have told her when he had left, or at least called her as soon as he knew something. And, almost more importantly, he would have told her what all of this was about. But instead he had asked her to come over to talk.

When she reached his building, she had to battle her instinct to race up the stairs to his loft. Instead she forced herself to walk at a brisk, short-of-running, pace. The doorman's friendly greeting barely registered to her as she zeroed in on the elevator, catching an empty one and riding up to his floor.

* * *

><p>The look on her face spoke volumes. Worry, concern, even a hint of fear fought for dominance in her features. Her face showed so much to him these days, so much more than when they had first met, yet he wasn't altogether sure how much of that she actually let him see.<p>

If anything, this only made what he had to do harder. And for all the self control he usually possessed, he was sure that his own face was more than just a mirror of hers.

"Kate."

"Castle, what…?"

"Coffee?" he asked, offering one of the mugs to her.

She took it, but kept her eyes glued on his face, boring into his.

He stayed silent, stepping aside to let her in, and then gestured for her to follow him into his office.

"Have a seat," he said, plopping down into one of the armchairs himself.

She stood for a moment, irritated, before finally sitting down herself, still watching him intently.

Minutes passed in silence. Long minutes. Stretching, uncomfortable silence. Ominous silence. He watched her giving in to the aroma wafting up from the mug she was holding, taking a couple of sips. He was toying with his own cup, too absent-minded to really notice what his hands where doing. Instead he was searching for words, for the carefully crafted "speech" that he'd started to put together after texting her.

He waited until he thought he could feel the silence stretched taught between them, and if he didn't start to talk soon, it would snap. He didn't want to imagine what that would bring.

"Kate…" he said softly, almost whispering. How should he do this? How _could_ he do this? She was sitting there, staring at him, waiting for him to tell her what…what he needed to tell her. Had to tell her. Why was this so damn hard?

He took a deep breath, trying to bring his heart rate under control. He failed though, but started anyway, his eyes transfixed on the carpet.

"After…after you were shot… The day you came back, I…I got a call." He paused, letting another long moment pass before he finally, tentatively, raised his eyes to meet hers.

Confusion dominated the dark pools of her eyes. And a hint of fear. He didn't want to imagine what she was seeing in his eyes.

"The man said…that he was a friend of…of Montgomery's." His voice, while still quavering from time to time, became stronger and more certain as he spoke. "He said that he had taken steps to protect you… But that he could only guarantee your safety as long as you stayed away from the…your mom's case."

While he spoke, he watched her jerk a little in shocked surprise, followed by her face falling to depths that he had rarely seen before. Where before he had seen confusion and traces of fear, the latter was now written all over her face, the confusion still there, but mildly subdued for the moment.

And, mixed with the fear, as much as he didn't want to see or admit it, he saw hurt. Anguish. He wasn't sure–didn't _want_ to be sure–of its reason, didn't know if it was the memory of her mom's death, her mentor's or her own near-death experience, or if it was the fact that he hadn't told her of this.

For however unsure he was of the reason, he knew he was the cause. And it killed him, looking at her face, her beautiful face, transmitting, silently screaming her heartbreak at him, and knowing that he was the cause of it.

He wanted so desperately to just get up, take the two steps over to where she sat and wrap her up in his arms, tell her everything would be fine. Just do something to help her, make it all better. But he couldn't.

He had hardly told her anything so far, there was still so much–so much he needed to tell her, because it mattered now. And so much he wanted to tell her now that the secret was out. All along he had wanted to confide in her, wished that they could work through this together, needed someone to lift a little of the load from his shoulders.

"Why, Castle?" she asked after an eternity of silence, drawing out the question, fighting the tears that were poised to leave her eyes.

He wasn't sure what she meant. Why hadn't he told her sooner? Why was he telling her now? Why had he lied to her?

"Kate…," he said softly, trailing off.

"Cas–," she stopped when her breath caught, her eyes shimmering, "Castle, why didn't you tell me?"

"I needed you to back down," he said, his voice almost a whisper, "would you have listened if I'd told you that you were only going to be safe as long as you didn't investigate your mom's case? Because I tried that before y… and it didn't work."

"And when you said that…I was not going to solve it that day, you…" She didn't finish the question, and a single tear leaked from her eye, trailing down her cheek.

He sighed deeply, willing himself to stay put until this was resolved. _Resolved_. Nothing would be resolved now. If he was lucky, at some future time it would be. Hopefully they would both still be around by then.

"I meant that," he said, gazing into her eyes, hoping that she would see the truth, the honesty, in his, "we had nothing, except the threat of another sniper, another hitman, coming for you if you kept digging."

He swallowed, noticing for the first time the lump that had formed in his throat. "So," he went on, "so I told you to step away, and… And I kept at it."

Silence fell, he didn't know how to continue. If he even should. He wasn't even afraid of her jumping out of her chair and running for the door. Not with the way she sat there, tense and slumped at the same time, coffee mug clutched in her hands, forgotten.

No, he was afraid that he had broken her. That this was the final twist, the one too many.

* * *

><p>Her thoughts were in turmoil. She was still trying to wrap her mind around the fact that he'd been in contact with someone who knew about the case, who was involved <em>somehow<em>, and kept it from her. What did he say? Why did he do it?

She felt the tears rise–hell, pound at what little of her emotional dam was still intact–, only waiting for a cue to run free. Would they ever stop if she let them? The little rational voice in the back of her mind told her that they obviously would stop at some point, but her feelings didn't agree.

Slowly her brain processed the words he had spoken. He had kept at it. After he'd told her to step away. He had done _what_?

Part of her–a big part–was hurt. She couldn't help but feel betrayed, even though reason told her that his entire motive had been to protect her. She didn't need protection. She was strong. She didn't _want_ protection.

How could he do this, after all she'd been through with this case? Her case, really. He had no right to keep it from her. _No_ right. By all means she should be furious. So why was she feeling like her whole world had caved in on her?

She cut that thought off right then, when keeping the tears at bay was all she could do. She didn't know how long he'd been silent, but she was actually kind of grateful that he didn't heap any more information onto her.

_Because he's been holding up your whole world. _Where did that thought come from? _He's been…what…_ She tried to shake the thought out of her head, but to no avail. It sat there, flat in the center, and smiled sympathetically at her. _Come on, Kate_, it coaxed her, _admit it. At least to yourself._

Great. Now she was discussing things with _herself_. The perfect moment to go crazy, really.

But the thought wouldn't go away, and the longer she tried to disprove it, the more she realized how right it was. From the day she'd been back at the precinct, she'd built on his strength, on his steady presence, drawn strength from his. She had even started tearing down that damn wall, brick by brick. _They_ had. And they had taken those bricks and started building something else. Something new. Something that couldn't be labeled yet, for she wasn't sure what it would be when it was finished… or if it would ever be finished.

He'd been there with her, be it in a murky warehouse, reassuring her with softly spoken words and implicit confidence, not pushing her PSTD issues when a sniper threatened the city or buoying her spirits with his jokes in a dark pit with a freezer full of handcuffs and knives and saws.

Whatever the matter, he'd been by her side, or at her back. She trusted him to have her back, and he had not let her down until now. Had he let her down by not telling her? What would she have done if he had told her sooner?

She had to admit that, at the heart of the matter, he was right. If he hadn't convinced her to take a step back, she might have–would have–holed up again, trying to find this mysterious man and his connection to the case. And if he was right, and the man behind Lockwood wanted to keep her from investigating the case then… What had Castle been thinking to work this case alone? What if the threat wasn't limited to her, what if he'd dug too deep and they'd ordered a hit on him? Wh… Oh.

Oh. She felt like her eyes opened–really opened–for the first time since he'd started talking some…eternity…ago.

Of course. He was her partner, he had her back. In his own, sometimes irritating way , but he had her back, without fail or doubt. He'd known that she hadn't been ready, and so he'd decided to keep this load off her shoulders, giving her the space, and the freedom, to find her bearings. And all because he…

It was like waking from a dream. From one second to the next, she was aware of her surroundings again. Aware of the silence that filled the room, loaded with a host of emotions and tension. Aware of the mug in her hand, whose contents must've turned cold a while ago, of the ticking of her watch, of the tears that wet her face, probably smearing her makeup.

Aware of the man sitting across from her. Looking at her. And, knowing him, fretting about her reaction to his confession.

A thousand thoughts flitted through her head. She wanted to hit the man for going behind her back, take his hands and thank him for doing all this, risking his own life to protect her, kiss him senseless for being the adorable person that he was… Wait. No. Well, technically yes, but no way was that going to happen. Not now.

She had a decision to make, and she had to make it now. She had made hard ones before. When he had first dug out her mom's case, she realized, she had been so hurt by his violation of her trust, and scared of falling back into the hole that she'd so barely escaped, that she had told him to go away. And then he'd shown up and apologized. He hadn't given up, and that, even if she didn't like to admit it, had been her reason to take him back. That and the trust she–they–had built.

Now it was different. They were different, and the whole situation was. She still trusted him, even more so than back then. And she'd trusted him with so many little stories, little secrets of hers, things that nobody, not even her Dad or Lanie knew.

Then there was this little voice in the back of her head, telling her to be mad at him, to scream, yell out her frustration at what he'd done and then turn around and run, to just get away from him.

But the other voice, the one that had come up with the even more disturbing thought before, didn't seem to be fazed at all. It still sat in the middle of her mind, ignoring the ruckus going on around it. She found this calm inside of her fascinating. She should by all means be drowning in despair or screaming in fury, yet there was this one spot of untouched peace.

She explored it, prodded it, until she began to realize why it was there, and what it was. It was, simply speaking, her trust in Castle, which explained perfectly why it was calm. While the rest of her was in limbo between rage and anguish, with neither side winning, the trust was calm because it knew he hadn't done this to hurt her. _She_ knew.

The first time he'd brought up the case, against her wishes, anguish had won and she'd been crushed. The last time they'd had an argument about it, rage had dominated her and she remembered brief flashes of that _conversation_.

She was beyond anguish, beyond curling up in a ball and waiting for the world to turn and lift the pain off of her. And, reluctantly, she saw that she was on her way to being beyond rage too; she didn't want to fight him. She wanted to trust him. Wanted to believe in him.

The voice in the back of her head grew a little quieter while the one in the center smiled a little at her. She breathed in deeply, let the air flow into and expand her lungs until she felt like she was about to burst before exhaling with a mighty sigh. She had decided.

* * *

><p>His posture was one of calm repose: feet on the floor, hands folded in his lap. Someone watching him from afar would have been fooled. But behind the blue of his eyes a storm was raging. Fear ran rampant. Fear that he'd made a mistake at some point along the road. Fear that his confession had broken her heart, or worse, her spirit. Was there really a 'worse' in this context? He wasn't sure.<p>

She was silent. Why was she silent? She should be mad at him, scream, yell… Hell, even if she hit him he'd have taken it gladly, just for the sake of getting a reaction. Something that proved that her spirit was still there. Words, he could handle. He was a wordsmith after all. He could even handle violence. At least, better than the absence of either.

He startled when she exhaled loudly. Or was it loud? The silence probably made it sound louder than it actually was. He returned his focus to where it had been for most of the time that they'd spent in here. He gazed into her eyes openly, unguarded. If she looked close enough, she'd surely be able to see the turmoil behind them. But he didn't–couldn't–care right then.

To his great–enormous–relief, she finally spoke. Quietly, but their surroundings where so silent that he didn't even have to make an effort to hear her words.

"Thank you, Castle," she said.

From one second to the next, his mind went into overdrive. Her voice sounded strained and still slightly choked, but it didn't sound one very important thing: angry. She wasn't angry. He'd known her for almost three years now, and he knew her moods. He knew how her voice sounded when she was hiding her anger. She didn't sound like this. He also knew how her voice sounded when she was genuinely thanking someone. And he thought he detected a hint of that sound in her voice now. Though for what she was thanking him, he had no idea.

She must've caught the confused look on his face, for her next words were, "For having my back. For keeping this off my back when I wasn't ready to lift it." Her left hand slipped from the mug and made a generic, including gesture in the middle of the room.

"You're right. When I came back, I wasn't in any shape to pick up that case again. If you had told me then, I would have fought you every step of the way. And it would've ended with me winning, or destroying…," she interrupted herself, casting an uncertain glance around the room, before going on, "You know me, Castle. I don't like to be taken care of," he snorted lightly at that statement, his confidence slowly returning with every second that passed without her flipping at him, "Okay, I hate it, but I don't blame you for keeping this from me. How could I?"

She gave him a small, almost shy, tight-lipped smile.

How could she blame him for doing what he had done? He could come up with an endless number of ways just in an instant, and yet it was apparently so obvious to her that he wasn't at fault. He was, in the most basic sense, speechless.

Now that she had started talking, there seemed to be almost no stopping her.

"I understand that you wanted to keep me safe. But for God's sake, why did you keep digging, Rick? Why? So you could crack the case all by yourself and then swoop in and be the knight in shining armor to bring me closure?"

She spoke evenly, no trace of accusation in her words. He realized that she only wanted to know. He swallowed, fumbling for the words.

"Kate… I feel like all of this is my fault. It was me who dragged up the case three years ago, and I got you to pursue it again. If I hadn't done that, then Montgomery would still be alive and you…you wouldn't have been…," he trailed off, his voice cracking toward the end while he fought his own rising tears.

She in turn gaped at him. "Your fault? You think this is your fault?"

When he just stared at her, eyes full of emotion, hurt, fear, guilt, she continued, "You didn't kidnap mobsters off the street. You didn't order the hit on my mom, and you didn't stab her. You didn't hire Lockwood to kill Raglan, McCallister and…Roy."

She looked straight into his eyes and said, "You. Didn't. Shoot. Me."

He opened his mouth to speak, all of his posture communicating dissent, but she cut him off before he could make a sound.

"Castle." One word, sharply spoken to get his attention. "Yes, you dug her case up, and yes, I was miserable and mad at you when you did that. But I'm over that. _We_ are over that, remember? And what if you hadn't dug up the case? Then we might never have caught Coonan. And Raglan still might have come to me, and everything would still have happened, except that I'd have been miserable then. Honestly Rick, that would have been so much worse. So. Much. Worse."

He still wasn't convinced, and he knew that she knew him well enough to see it. But decided to keep quiet and listen to her.

"Look at what you've done apart from that, what you're doing all the time. Yes, you annoy the hell out of me, you weasel your way into my private life no matter if I tell you not to, but at the end of the day…you make me smile, Castle. You do all your prying and bugging and tugging and…," she interrupted herself, her frown being replaced by a slow smile. "You remember what I told you the night after I shot Coonan?"

He searched his memory for a moment, then replied, "You said that you had a hard job and that I made it a little more fun… And you said you wanted to have me around when you catch the guys that hired Coonan."

She could tell he was still wary, but at least he wasn't transmitting as much guilt as before.

"Yes, that's what I said. And I stand by that. I want you to be there with me when we take them down. Because whatever happened or will happen, we're partners, Rick. Always," she added, finally being rewarded by a tentative smile.

"You mean…?" he asked.

"I mean for you to stop moping around and tell me what on earth made you believe you could keep investigating that case on your own? What if they had noticed and got someone to kill you? What about your family? Alexis? Martha?" _What about me?_

"I… Kate… I wanted to be prepared for the next time we stumbled upon a lead. And I wanted to have something when I told you about… this."

He was silent for a bit, and she waited him out, only probing with her eyes. Finally he gave in and continued.

"Alexis… she doesn't need me that much anymore. She's going to college soon and…"

Now she was back to being slack-jawed. Did he not know? How could he not know?

"Rick," she began, "you're everything to her. When you and Martha were in that bank, I talked to her, and she said that the two of you were all she had. She all but screamed that at me, Rick. You are the only father she has." She swallowed hard, biting back the tears that were coming dangerously close to the surface again. "She's younger than I was when I lost my mom, Rick! How can you think she doesn't need you?"

She was aware that she had almost shouted those last sentences at him, and so was he. What she wasn't aware of was how she had come to be standing between the two chairs, and when the mug had migrated from her hands to the desk.

Had he just… _Yeah…idiot_, he thought to himself. He knew that he had these moments when he just didn't fully think through the things he said, but this was an extremely bad situation to be thoughtless.

He didn't even mean the words the way he'd said them… the way he now realized they'd sounded to her. All he'd meant to say was… Well, it didn't matter now, not really. What mattered was trying his best to keep her with him and make this right. As right as it could become now, anyway.

He was still completing this thought when he jumped up from his chair, meeting her where she stood in the middle of the room, taking her hands in his.

"Kate, I'm sorry, I didn't mean… I didn't…," he trailed off, searching her eyes with his. _Please, Kate, _he thought, _please stay here_.

If she was startled by the sudden proximity, she didn't let on. Instead she deflated visibly, gripping his hands and leaning forward against him, resting her head on his shoulder. They stayed like this for a minute, before she pushed away from him, though still keeping a hold of his hands.

"Kate…," he breathed, gazing at her with wide eyes.

"Rick, there are people who love you, people who need you. People who would be devastated if something happened to you…"

"Last time I checked, it was my life," he said softly, "I believe those were your words."

She shook her head. "Rick…"

"No, Kate. If that argument works for you, then why can't I use it?"

"Because you have a family, Rick."

"As do you."

"But you have a daughter!"

"And you have a father who already lost his wife to those people. He couldn't lose you, Kate."

"Rick…"

"It happened, okay, Kate? What's done is done, and you're right, it was–is– a risk, but… I couldn't not do anything."

She dook a deep breath, let it out, then took another. He was right. Of course he was, but she didn't have to like it. She should be glad that he was still alive, though. They both should be. Closing her eyes, she pushed her concern and her desire to hash it out right there, to make him see her point, no matter how wrong it might be, to the back of her mind, while at the same time she let go of his hands and took a step away from him, as if to restore at least an air of professionalism.

"Okay, Castle, that covers why you didn't tell me then," she said, still fighting a little to keep her voice even. "But why are you telling me now?"

His eyes had been fixed on the floor from the moment she'd let go of his hands. They remained there for a spell before he straightened and looked at her again.

Everything that she'd seen in his eyes before, all those terrible emotions, they were still there, lurking in the corners, where only someone who knew him well could see them. For the most part, they were being replaced by steel: blue, determined steel.

The worst part was over, the secret was out, and she was still there. Both of them were relatively well too. He hadn't screwed up. Not completely, anyway. And now she was signaling him that she was ready to move forward from that. He would've been relieved if not for the little voice reminding him that the worst was still ahead of them.

"This guy, the victim… I recognized him. In the photo," he said, watching her closely. "A lot of the digging I did was about social profiles, focusing on the three cops. Finding out who they were in contact with, mutual acquaintances and that sort of thing."

"Yeah, I know what a social profile is, Castle," she interjected.

"And I also checked those people's contacts. Montgomery told us that the guy used the money to become what he is today, so that implies either more money or power. Or, more likely, both. And there really was a connection. It wasn't obvious, else we would've found it already when we were on the case while you were…recovering. But there was one name that popped up several times. One name, and never in direct contact with any of the three. Karl Weston. Our victim."

Karl Weston. A connection between the three cops that nobody had managed to find until then. Until Castle had asked the right question. Her head swam with the implications of this one name… and its association to the body that was currently being scrutinized by Lanie.

"What do you know about him?" she asked, pulling herself together once more, trying to focus on him, the board, the facts.

"He's–was– a lawyer. Specialized in business law, with a respectable clientele back in the day…hold on a sec," he said, turning around and walking over to his storyboard.

He took the remote control from the shelf above and switched it on, then tapped an icon and brought up her face, squarely in the middle of the screen, her name written underneath. Another double-tap on it and it shrunk a little, a number of other faces spinning outward, settling in a circle. Her mom and her colleagues, Roy, Lockwood, McCallister, Raglan, Armen, Pulgatti, Coonan… Those she recognized. And then there was another face, just one, straight below hers at the bottom of the screen. Underneath it the name Karl Weston.

He double-tapped that face and it replaced hers in the middle of the screen, with a new set of faces appearing around it along with several columns of notes. Beckoning her over he scanned the text until he found what he'd been looking for.

"Ah. There it is. He had his own office and worked for a variety of clients, some of them even known mobsters, until he was accused of aiding and abetting in a large case of money laundering in 1985… Police found proof and he subsequently lost his license and went to prison for three years, stoutly denying all accusations directed at him. When he got out in '88, he used the connections that he'd made as an attorney to get a job as a senior business consultant. That went on until '91, when he gave bad advice to a number of clients and was subsequently let go. In response to this he opened up his own office, but with little success. Understandable, given the events that got him fired.

"Now comes the interesting part. There's a coffee shop across from where he had his office. Opened up in 1978 and until today it's been owned by the same person. You might think that's surprising, but the guy makes really great coffee…"

She cleared her throat, snapping him back on track.

"Right. Now the man, Mr Cervelli, knew Weston, who was a regular at the shop. They exchanged bits of small-talk every morning when Weston got his coffee, nothing more than that. I spoke to Cervelli when I researched Weston. The guy is clean, by the way, no indications of mob ties in all those years. So, Cervelli has an excellent memory for faces. When I showed him pictures of these," he indicated three pictures on the right of Weston's, "gentlemen, he confirmed that Weston met all three of them in his very coffee shop. Separately, of course. With a few months between each meeting. The man is a genius, he's kept every tab since the first day…

"Anyway, the first of those meetings took place two months after FBI Special Agent Bob Armen's death. He met with this guy," he pointed to the picture of a younger man, maybe in his late twenties, across which was printed DECEASED in red letters, "named Charly Harris. Petty crook, a few priors, nothing more serious than theft. The day after that meeting, Harris met with Raglan in a bar across town. The landlord there remembered them because their conversation got loud and Raglan stormed out.

"Harris was found dead about a week later. Report lists cause of death as an overdose of heroin. And although he'd had no prior history with drugs, the investigating detective closed the case. He was a man from the 54th, Colosa. Nickname "Colossus". Retired eight years ago, died last year of cancer. Chain smoker. I didn't find any connection to the case, so maybe he just overlooked something.

"Situation was pretty much the same with the other two. Met with Weston, contacted either Raglan or McCallister, then died from an overdose. Nobody ever made the connection to either of our dirty cops nor Weston."

She stood next to him, eyeing the storyboard while processing the information he'd just given her. Her gears were turning at full speed, running several possible scenarios in her head before settling on the one that made the most sense to her.

"Good job, Castle," she said, turning a little toward him and flashing him a slightly impressed smile. _Slightly impressed, hah…_ Actually she was overwhelmed by what he'd found out that the police hadn't, and all without getting himself killed… _Stop it, Kate. Not that road again._

"Thank you," he responded, attempting a small smile of his own. "Took a while to get all of this together."

"Yeah, looks that way," she said, a little absentmindedly.

Of course he caught on to her distraction immediately. "What are you thinking?"

"Roy told us that the mysterious man blackmailed them after Bob Armen was killed… Now you tell me this guy, Weston, met with three people who in turn met with Raglan or McCallister, only to be found dead a week later. That cannot be a coincidence. What if–"

"–Weston was really working as a middle man for our mysterious blackmailer and hired some middle men himself to do the actual blackmailing, then killed them and made it look like an overdose," he finished the thought for her, moving over to lean his hip against the desk.

She smiled a little at the ease with which they fell into building theory together. "But Weston was a business lawyer. Even if he spent three years in jail, I don't think he'd know how to make a murder look like an overdose."

"Hum… Maybe he activated some of his old mob ties. I mean, he probably used to save them a lot of money as a lawyer, so they might've owed him a favor or two."

"Could be… Or the blackmailer had something to do with it. Maybe he was a mobster, or another sort of criminal, with the right connections to get the drugs and know how to stage an overdose."

"As nice as it is to be theorizing with you, I don't think we'll solve those murders from in here," he said, "Besides, we have a fresh murder on our hands."

"Right," she replied, tearing her eyes away from his storyboard–his_ murder_board. "Right. We need to get Ryan and Esposito up to speed about this." She looked up at him as she pulled her phone out of her pocket. "I presume you haven't told them either?"

"Not a word. Nobody knew about this. Nobody except my mother and Alexis, that is."

"You told Alexis?" she asked, a little shocked.

"Not exactly. She overheard mother and I talking about it… a bit loudly," he conceded.

She frowned. "Where are they anyway? Martha and Alexis… It's awfully quiet in here."

"They're out. My mother decided to take Alexis on a big New Years shopping tour." He glanced at his watch, revealing the time to be almost eight pm. "I called them on the way home, about two hours ago. They were fine," he said, but fumbled for his phone anyway, typing a quick "Are you OK?" to his daughter once he'd found it.

She had dialed her colleague's number while he had still been speaking.

"Yo Beckett," came from the other end of the line.

"Espo, I need you and Ryan to come to Castle's place, ASAP."

"Is everything alright?" came the detective's alarmed question.

"Depends on your definition of alright," she answered, "but mostly yes. We'll explain everything once you get here."

"Alright, see you in a few," he said, audibly relieved, probably at her use of "we" instead of "I".

"They're coming," she said, pocketing her phone.

He just nodded, staring at the display of his, waiting for a response to his text from a minute earlier. After all the theorizing they'd just done, and the stinging reminders of the risk he'd taken by digging around, he couldn't help but worry.

After another agonizingly slowly passing half-minute, his phone chimed, and the display showed a new message. He tapped the icon and was greeted by picture of his daughter and mother sitting side by side in a booth, smiling up at the camera. The place probably was a diner, judging by what was visible of the table and the few fries poking into the bottom of the image. The message below the image read "We're fine, Dad :-)".

He let out a sigh and relaxed, then flipped the phone around and showed the picture to her.

"Looks like they're having a good time," she said, smiling.

"Yeah," he answered. They spent a minute in silence before he pushed away from the desk. "Coffee must be cold," he obsvered.

"Yep," she snorted.

"Then… I guess I should go make a fresh pot."

He picked up her mug from the desk and his from the floor next to his chair on the way out of his office. She stayed for a moment, taking one more look at the screen before switching it off and following him to the kitchen.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Hope you liked it. If you did, feel like telling me? If you didn't, tell me what put you off? Thanks :)**

**Slightly unrelated (not really, no…), I'm a slow updater. Mostly because inspiration decides to strike randomly, and rather rarely, if I may say so. Just saying…**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N****: Sorry for the wait. Honestly, six weeks is sort of unacceptable. Or it would be, but in my defense, I've had semester finals and they were spaced out so badly that I didn't really have much time off, and so I didn't get into the spirit. That said, half of this chapter was**** written on the day after my last final :p.  
>I'm rambling. I hope you can forgive me for the wait, and I promise I won't take another six weeks for the next chapter. In fact, I've already started writing, plus I have a working outline (at least for that chapter), so things are looking good on that front.<strong>

**The obligatory: I do not own Castle. Or Beckett. If I did, I'd keep them locked up in my basement until they'd finally come to their senses.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><em>So make the best of this test and don't ask why<em>

They had just settled down at the kitchen island with fresh coffee when the clatter of keys resounded from the door, followed by an apparently exhausted Alexis being hustled inside by a seemingly tireless Martha.

"Richard, darling, we're home," came his mother's voice, announcing the obvious.

Castle got up and ambled over to greet his family, wrapping his daughter in a hug while pecking his mother on the cheek.

"Am I going to be shocked by the bill?" he asked lightly, his usual smile coming easily, as if the past few hours hadn't happened.

"Oh, never mind the bill," Martha said, waving him off, then spotting Beckett still sitting at the island. "Kate, darling," she called, "what do we owe the pleasure of your presence to?"

Castle jumped in before she had a chance to answer, "It's about the case, mother."

_The_ case. Not _a_ case. Not _our_ case, as in "our current case".

Martha froze between Castle and Beckett.

Beckett shot glances from Castle to Martha and back.

Alexis perked up in her dad's embrace, pulling back a little to look up at him.

Castle swallowed.

"_The_ case, dad?" the young redhead asked.

He was amazed at how fast the two caught onto it. Just a single word, "the" instead of "a". And they knew. Maybe it had been something in the way he'd said it, but it was clear to him that they'd gotten the right idea. Backing out would be nearly impossible now, and he knew that he couldn't do it even if he wanted to. Because everything had changed now, they were probably going to get back on track, and were most definitely heading for the heart of danger.

Martha turned, addressing her son, "You told her?"

"Yes, he told me," Beckett said, her voice calm and even. Must be the coffee, she thought to herself, before continuing, "He told me about the man that called him, and why he kept me away from the case… And–"

"And that I kept investigating," Castle finished for her, drawing Martha's focus back to him.

His mother's expression was a mixture of astonishment, a bit of fear and a great deal of worry. "And you're still here," she said, turning back to Beckett, the implicit "Why?" flowing on the tone of her voice. "And you haven't killed him either. Well, that certainly looks better than I would've expected."

"Kill him," retorted Beckett.

"Not _kill him_ kill him," the older woman replied, slightly exasperated, "but I would have expected to see a few marks of a heated argument…and not you sitting here sipping coffee, like nothing happened."

"Well, uhm…," she fumbled for the right words, letting out a relieved sigh when Castle came to her rescue.

"We talked about it, and worked it out. Like grown-ups," he added, throwing a pointed look at his mother.

"Now that's a new one," Martha replied, and he thought he detected a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "Anyway, I'm glad you did it without tearing anything down. Now, I think we should leave you two alone, there are a lot of purchases to be sorted and stowed away…"

She and Alexis, who had picked up a mound of shopping bags after leaving her dad's embrace, had reached the stairs when he called them back, meeting their curious stares as they turned around.

"What is it, dad?" Alexis asked.

"It's… There's…" He stumbled, not quite sure how to put this delicately, how to tell them what they needed to know while at the same time not telling them too much.

"A murder victim was found today," Beckett cut in, creating a pause by taking a swig from her mug, "Castle recognized him, and then he–"

"I was pretty much in shock, as you might imagine, so I went home to get my bearings and think things through before I called Beckett and asked her to come here. And then I told her."

"Yes?" Alexis prompted.

"This victim," Castle continued, having found the words, "is connected to the case. I only have a theory about the hows and whys, but I'm pretty sure that he's a part of the scheme."

He paused, looking gravely at his family, their faces radiating concern and worry. "This means," he went on, "that we're going to have to touch the case again. There's no getting around it. And that…is going to be dangerous. Very dangerous."

"Dad, wh–"

"Listen, Alexis, Mother, I want you to leave town for a few days. Maybe go up to the Hamptons, or… I don't know, just out of here. Until it's safe again."

"Dad! What about you?" Alexis shouted, the vibration in her voice betraying her fear. "We're not gonna leave you here, w–"

"Yes, you are. I can't go, you know that. Kate's my partner, and this is as much my fight as it's hers… I'm sorry sweetheart, but that's the way it is," Castle said, silently praying for her to understand him, to give in just this time.

"Nonsense, Richard," said Martha, her voice slightly quavering. She quickly regained her calm though, and continued, "If this man is as powerful as you suspect, then there won't be a place safe enough. How hard do you think it would be for him to find out that you own a house in the Hamptons? And say we took a plane somewhere else, he could probably find that out too in just a minute.

"You're right, there's no going around this. In fact, there's no running from this either. From him. Not for you, or any of us."

Castle turned to Beckett, imploring her with his eyes to help him convince them. But she just slightly shook her head before she spoke, "She has a point, Castle. A good one, actually. If he wants to find someone, he will. I'm certain of that."

"But–"

"Castle, think about it for a moment. If, only if, he were to try and get at them, wouldn't you want to be in a position where you could do something about it?"

"I… Kate, don't say… don't say that, please…," he almost choked out, fear now the only thing left on his face.

"Rick," she said softly, getting up and closing the distance between them in a few sure strides, putting her hands on his arms as she reached him, "I'm not saying it will happen. You know that we'll do everything we can to prevent it. We'll get a protective detail here… And you can board up the windows if it makes you feel better," she added, the hint of a smirk gracing her lips.

"You really think you can convince Gates to spare the people…"

"My mum taught me how to argue, and she was a lawyer. Trust me, I know which buttons I have to press."

He lifted his hands and curled his fingers around her elbows, closing his eyes while taking a deep breath. When he opened them again, the spark was back, dancing there in the blue, ready to start a blaze. The smirk that crawled onto his features gave her the chills, as there was no humor in it. The look in his eyes, the line of his jaw and the smirk all together promised one thing: Danger.

Probably for the first time, she really appreciated that this man–whom she'd gotten to know as a carefree playboy at first, then soon enough also as a loving father and, underneath all of his jokes, a sincere and solid friend–could become a truly dangerous man. Dangerous for anyone who dared to rouse his wrath.

She swallowed, forcing herself not to blink, not to look away. Slowly, tentatively, she allowed a smile of her own to appear. Friendlier than his, trying to calm him down. And sure enough, after only a couple of seconds his features softened, and his smile relaxed too.

"We'll get him, Castle," she said firmly, "Together."

"I know," he replied, "I know we will. Thank you, Kate."

"Always," came her response, and her smile grew a little wider.

"Uh… Dad? Detective Beckett?" Alexis asked, a little sheepishly, interrupting their moment.

"What?" He tore his eyes away from Beckett's, focusing on his daughter. "Ah, right… Well, I suppose there's not much sense in trying to argue with all of you ganging up on me. So if you're determined to stay, you'll stay. But," he added, "there will be new rules. You don't leave the house unless it's absolutely necessary. You will keep away from the windows, and we'll have new curtains. Thick, heavy curtains, that will be closed at all times. And don't open the door."

His 'rules' were met with silence. He tried to gauge if they were silently agreeing with him or if they were simply too stunned to argue, but utterly failed as their expressions were, at the moment, unreadable for him.

Alexis opened her mouth after a minute of tense silence, but Martha beat her to it.

"Richard, dear, I think you're overreacting. Being a little more careful is one thing…," she trailed off, turning to Beckett, "Do you think that's necessary, Kate?"

Beckett was thrown off by the question. She hadn't really expected to be included in this discussion, had thought that it was going to be between them, since, in her opinion, they were the only ones concerned with these rules.

On second thought she thought she understood Martha's motivation to ask her opinion; if she knew how protective Castle could get, his family had to know even better, so what made more sense than to ask someone with a (hopefully) objective view if he was overdoing it? Also, Martha might have anticipated that involving her would keep both Castles from taking the argument to a loudness that would definitely be too much for this hour of day… Castle certainly would listen to her, and as far as she knew Alexis respected her opinion too.

She considered Castle's points carefully. He wanted to essentially turn the loft into his own little fortress, complete with a turret if he could get that anywhere. With his imagination and money she couldn't put it past him to come up with something sufficiently similar. But what would it achieve?

Wasn't their real goal, besides catching the Dragon, to avoid tipping him or anyone else off that they were investigating the case again? And assuming that he somehow had eyes on Castle's family, wouldn't practically locking them away from the world rouse his suspicion? Maybe, under these circumstances, subtlety was what they needed. Life going on like every other day, just being a little more on guard.

She sighed, turning to Castle. "She's right, Rick," she said, meeting his eyes, expecting a flash of anger for her not backing him up. There was nothing of the kind though, just a brief display of shock before he reeled his expression in, leaving just a questioning frown up for her to see.

"And why's that?" he asked, his voice laced with irritation.

"Because… think about it: those things you suggest, they would make some sort of sense if he knew that we know, and if he were really targeting you and your family. But for all we know he doesn't have a clue that we know who the victim is, and we have to do everything to keep it that way. The second he finds out is the second we can take serious action, but before that we should keep it down. The longer he thinks that we don't know, the longer we are actually safe. All of us," she concluded, gesturing to his mother and daughter.

Castle stood silently, processing what she'd said. Was she right? Could it be that he really had just freaked out? The more he thought about it, the more he had to agree. It really was like him to jump ahead and assume the worst when his family was concerned. After calming down a bit he had to admit that Beckett's logic was sound, and her assumption sensible. They would've gotten word if there had been a hit in any of the databases, so likely the man wasn't in any of them. Which left the Dragon in the position to assume that they didn't know of the connection to him… Otherwise he would've been more careful about hiding or getting rid of the body.

It amazed him a little how much her presence did in the way of calming him. Usually it would be his mother who took the part when it was about Alexis, or vice versa. Now that it was about both of them… he almost laughed a little. She really did fit in with them.

He blinked once, slowly, before giving her a small nod. "I guess you do have a point," he conceded. "Keeping it down might be the best strategy for the moment." He gave her a small smile before turning to his family. "But we're still going to get new curtains."

"Well, in that case," Martha said, "where did I put the number of that interior decorator?"

When she walked up the stairs, presumably in search of said phone number, Alexis turned to her dad, fidgeting. He, knowing his daughter, just nudged her shoulder with his elbow, trying to both coax a smile out of her and encourage her to say what was so obviously bothering her.

"Dad, can we talk for a minute?" she asked quietly.

"Sure, sweetheart," he replied instantly, focusing on her.

"Alone?" A glance to Beckett accompanied that question.

"Uh… Beckett?" Castle said, turning halfway around to address his partner, "could you wait in the study? I'll be right there."

"Yeah, sure," she assented, turning to walk out of the room. She turned back around after one step and showed the two a slightly hesitant smile.

When the door to his study had completely closed, he returned his attention back to Alexis. "What's the matter?"

"Dad, are you… are you sure about this?"

"About what?"

"Do… do you have to do this?"

"Oh, sweetie," he said, his face falling at the sight of the fear in his daughter's eyes. "Yes. Yes, I have to."

"But you're not even a real cop, what could you do to–"

"I think we've had that conversation before," he interrupted her. "I may not have a badge and gun, but I'm still just as much a part of the team. Beckett needs help with this, all the help she can get in fact, and I'm her partner. Partners don't bail when things get tough. And besides, since the fall I've become just as involved as she…"

For a moment, Alexis looked like she was going to freak out, start yelling and throwing things. Only a moment though, and taking a few deep breaths returned her usual calm demeanor. But they didn't quite wipe the fear and worry off of her face.

"Yeah, I know," she responded. She was quiet for a bit, but resumed talking before he could prompt her again, "I'm not blaming you, Dad. I know she means a lot to you, and you've always told me to stick up for my friends, so it would be a bad example if you didn't do the same. And don't get me wrong, I think Detective Beckett is a really nice person, it's not that I don't want you to be there for her… It's… I'm afraid, Dad. I'm afraid for you, for her, for us. And I hate that. The being afraid part."

Castle was conflicted between smiling at his daughter's rambling and shedding a few tears at the sound of her voice; he couldn't remember many times when she had sounded so dispirited. It was not a voice he liked to hear her speak in. Not at all. He decided to go with neither of the conflicting emotions and instead pulled Alexis in for a hug, wrapping himself around her as if to shield her from the darkness that was looming just out of sight and tucking her head under his chin. He felt her sigh against his chest as her arms slipped around him.

"You know, I'm afraid too," he whispered, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "And I hate it just like you do." He paused. "But I believe that we have a chance to catch this guy. And we should take that, if it means that we can stop him from dominating Kate's life… all our lives."

Alexis just burrowed herself further into him, squeezing him tighter. He would have liked it, had he not been able to practically feel the bundle of fear and worry seeping from her and into him. Hell, he was afraid too. Big time. He was worried that they'd make a mistake and tip off the Dragon, ending with either themselves or someone close to them dead. He wouldn't get rid of that, not until the guy was caught, but he knew that he couldn't let it rule him. And he hoped she'd at least let him do what he had to.

"Dad?" she said after a few minutes of silent embrace.

"Yes pumpkin?"

"Just… just promise me that you'll be careful, okay?"

"Of course," he replied instantly, "of course I'll be careful. I plan to keep annoying you for a long time."

"Dad!" she admonished him, but he thought he could feel her smiling against his chest.

He chuckled in response, the rumble in his chest transferring onto her, before they fell silent again.

"Detectives Ryan and Esposito will be here any minute," he said, breaking the silence once more, "I think it's best if you go upstairs."

"Okay," she said, extricating herself from his arms and moving to climb the stairs. She turned back to him on the second step, telling him, "I love you, Dad," before rushing upstairs.

He looked after her for a moment, partially marvelling at how mature she was acting. But the larger part of him was silently wondering how much of this was really just an act for his benefit. He had expected more of a fight, both from her and before from Kate when he had told her. Yet neither fight had happened, which confused him. He shook his head, deciding not to look into the gift horse's mouth, and walked to his study.

* * *

><p>"She okay?" Beckett asked after he closed the door behind him. She had her back to him, looking out of the window.<p>

He weighed honesty against a little white lie to put her at ease, but figured that he wouldn't be able to make her believe him, so he settled for the first path. "Not really. I mean, how okay can she be when her dad's almost freaking out?" He was aware of how strained his voice sounded, and how tired he felt. Abnormally tired, really, since it wasn't too late and the day had only been frustrating, not overly stressful–not counting the few hours since they had been to the morgue. Yet those few hours seemed to weigh on him more than a week without sleep would.

When she didn't respond, he moved away from his position at the door and closer to her, stopping somewhere in the middle. She had taken all of this better than he'd expected, but then she was an expert compartmentalizer, and he feared that she'd just shove her real feelings about his confession into a box until they had closed the case. While he was sure she'd done so successfully in the past–she never talked about it, hence he didn't actually know–he doubted that she'd be able to pull that off now. Not with this case.

"Are you?" he asked. "Okay, I mean." He felt his throat clam up when she still didn't respond. "Are we?"

The last question–or maybe the tone of his voice, he wasn't sure–received a tiny shrug of her shoulders in response. So small, so fragile-looking, that it broke his heart. "Kate…"

"Castle…" She sounded like she was just as close to the edge as he himself was. He briefly wondered where she'd taken the strength from to keep her calm in front of his family. He had no idea how, but she'd had that strength, and she'd used it to calm him, reassure him somehow; now, though, he didn't really feel sure of anything.

He heard her draw an almost strangled breath, then another one, easier, deeper. She brought her hands up to her face before she turned around, and just by that motion and her next words, he knew that she had pulled her walls back up, "Can we not do this now, Castle?" Just like that, he felt like all the time since the fall he'd spent chipping away at those blasted walls had been washed away.

Castle allowed his shoulders to slump a little, dropping his head for a second. He could try to talk to her, to get her to see that she didn't have to do it like this… But who was he fooling? When her PTSD had kicked in barely a month earlier, she had walled up too, and he hadn't been able to do a thing about it. And this wasn't _just _PTSD now, not _just _a sniper on the loose. It was _her_ case, and maybe _her _sniper. Yet, he wasn't ready to give in completely.

He rolled his shoulders in a fruitless attempt to shake the glum feeling off before he lifted his gaze back at her. "Fine," he replied, "we won't do it now." He thought he could see her relax a little. "But we _will_ do it later, Beckett."

They had to function in order to solve this case, he knew that. And functioning would be hard if they were breaking down every time they hit a calm, every time the adrenaline stopped pushing them. He wanted her to be able to break down, let out all the stress and tension that she'd built up, but he wasn't sure if he would be strong enough to be her rock, or if seeing her lose it would pull him over the edge right along. And even if he could hold himself together, there was no guarantee that he'd be strong enough to piece her back together as well. He wanted to believe that he could do that, but he was sensible enough to see that he very well might not be able to. So he settled for trusting that her method worked well enough to carry her–them–through it.

She didn't respond to his statement, and so they slipped into a very awkward silence, waiting for the boys to show up and give them a reason to talk about something that wasn't necessarily as painful as the conversation they were avoiding now. Though Castle was in no way certain how the boys would react to the fact that he'd continued the investigation on his own. They would probably be able to understand that he'd wanted to protect Beckett, but they might be mad at him for leaving them in the dark. _Well,_ he thought, _that remains to be seen._

The doorbell saved them from further awkwardness, at least for the moment. Castle made his way out of the office and to the front door without thinking, only stopping for a moment when he stood right in front of it, hand already poised to open. He took a quick look through the peephole, verifying that it was really the two detectives standing on the other side, before he sighed and opened the door, inviting them in with just as much as a short and tired "Come in."

Both Ryan and Esposito looked outright suspicious, if not worried, at the not-so-grand gesture and probably his general state (he had the feeling that his tiredness and uneasiness still showed), but came in quickly nonetheless, looking around as he closed the door.

"Where's Beckett?" Ryan asked.

"Office," Castle replied tersely, "come on."

He turned to lead the way, but Esposito snatched him by his sleeve.

"What's up, bro?" the man asked, his brow furrowed in what clearly passed as irritation now, "No 'Hey, it's good to see you'? Are you two really alright?"

Castle sighed. "Yes–No–I… We're not hurt. Physically." That didn't help to put his friends a little more at ease. "You'll understand in a minute." With that, he extracted his sleeve from Esposito's hold and walked away. The two detectives shared a confused look before following him to the office.

* * *

><p>Beckett stood behind one of the armchairs, leaning on it, gauging the mood in the room–as if there was anything left to gauge. Ryan was at the window, looking straight out, as he'd done for the past five minutes. Esposito alternated between throwing worried glances at her and death glares at Castle, who sat in his desk chair, shoulders slumped, face broadcasting general dejection.<p>

Castle had told her two colleagues all that he'd told her about the case and his research, and neither of them had taken it very well. She could only guess at all the reasons that made them react the way they did, but she was sure she could name at least a few.

For one, they were both worried about her. They always were when she was about to go into a dangerous situation, and dangerous might have been just a tiny understatement for this. It wasn't the immediate danger of a suspect takedown where the perp might point a gun at them, yet that, the slight intangibility, the not knowing who their perp was to begin with, made it all the more dangerous.

Secondly, they were probably both pissed that Castle had kept them in the dark as well, and rightfully too. She still didn't understand why he hadn't told them, and neither did they, obviously. Ryan had been quiet the whole time, just listening to what Castle had to say. A casual observer wouldn't have noticed it, but she had worked with him long enough to be able to tell when something irritated him, even if he didn't say so–and he very rarely ever did say so. Now, though, the tension in his shoulders and the special way in which he furrowed his eyebrows told her that he was beyond irritated.

Esposito, on the other hand, never made a secret of his frustration, and this time was no exception. It had taken her hand on his arm and hard glances to get him to shut up and listen several times during Castle's report, and now that everything was said, Esposito's temper was obviously boiling beneath the surface. She was actually surprised that he hadn't started yelling at Castle yet. She knew that had to happen soon, or he might start to test the stability of the loft's walls.

She herself hadn't said a word since those decidedly uncomfortable minutes alone with Castle just before the boys had arrived. She still cursed herself for almost losing it like that, but the quiet minutes alone in his study after talking to his family had only served to wear her down as her mind had chosen to play back Alexis' and Castle's expressions from that conversation. She couldn't shake the thought of the things that could've happened to him since the summer… or the things that could still happen to him. She wanted to tell him to stay home, to stay safe, but she knew that he would never let her do this alone; no matter how much she'd assure him that with the boys' help she'd hardly be alone. And, for another, she didn't really want to do this without him. He might be stupid and stubborn from time to time, but he was still her partner, and it was a fact –though she would never admit to it–that she worked better with him by her side than without.

When Esposito's gaze was on her once again, she nodded at him while pushing herself up off the chair, straightening her back.

The grumpy detective returned the gesture, then turned fully on Castle.

"What the hell, man?" He didn't yell, didn't even raise his voice much above the normal level. "What were you thinking? You could've gotten yourself killed in this, you know that? And why didn't you tell us? I mean, we could've helped you…"

Beckett had no trouble discerning that her friend's frustration wasn't so much directed toward Castle as to the whole situation, the slightly awkward gesture Esposito concluded his words with only serving to make her point.

"I… I'm sorry, but I thought it was for the best that way. If Beckett couldn't look into the case, I figured whoever is behind this must have ways to monitor the police. So if you had started digging, he'd have found out and ordered you killed, or God knows what. But–"

Ryan surprised them all by cutting Castle off, "But if you were to do all of it on your own, that would make it alright? That you'd be able to slip past his attention, just because you're not a cop? Is that what you were thinking?"

He hadn't even turned around or moved, indicating in any way that he was fully present and not on some kind of out-of-body-experience. His voice, however, carried a slightly aggressive, accusing undertone. Beckett realized that while she and Esposito were always teasing him for acting like he was 'little Castle', Ryan actually had a good idea of what was going on in Castle's head. Maybe that was the reason he acted the way he did toward Castle, maybe he understood the writer better than they all gave him credit for.

"I… Yes," Castle managed, looking utterly defeated.

Esposito continued to glare at him for another minute, then huffed and addressed the whole room, "So what's our next move?"

Beckett considered it; while Esposito had spoken to everyone, she knew that the question was really meant for her. She swallowed before responding, "First we have to make sure to keep this under wraps. Nobody can know, or we risk that He gets wind of it."

"That shouldn't be too hard. Any of you planning to tell anyone?" Esposito asked.

Ryan just shook his head, almost imperceptibly, but Castle perked up. "What about Gates?"

Esposito whipped around. "Gates? Are you out of your mind?"

"Why?" the writer shot back, visibly shaking off the dejection that had held him in its grasp.

"Why?" echoed the detective in question. "Because. We don't know that she's not secretly working for Him. And remember, she closed the case."

Castle cocked his head. "I never thought I'd be defending her, but… Yeah, she closed the case–because she works by the book. And she might have her quirks about orders and procedure, but really, has she done anything to warrant your suspicion?"

Beckett was about to back Castle up, since she thought he was right and also because she had promised him to get protection for his family… And Gates would definitely want to know why she needed to assign officers to watch Castle's mother and daughter.

But Ryan beat her to it. "We can't go to Gates." His voice rung clear through the room, and they all turned their heads in his direction, realizing that he'd turned around and was facing them instead of the city now. "How would we even try to sell this to her? For all we know, there's no connection between this… Weston… and the sniper, only between him and Him. So if we tell her about this, then we have to tell her all of it if we want her to believe us. And then we have to tell her about the captain too…" He trailed off, but the hurt beneath the hardness in his voice was there for all of them to hear.

Beckett wanted to hit herself in the head for her stupidity. How on earth did she forget about that? In her hurry to calm Castle down and… _Crap._ She needed a new plan, one that would work without Gates or anyone else involved, something… Sure enough, when she looked from Ryan over to Castle, the latter had narrowed his eyes at her. Thankfully though, he didn't say anything. It was Esposito instead who brought up the point, at least in a way.

"What about your dad, Beckett?" When she turned to him, a confused look on her face, he elaborated, "I mean, Lockwood threatened Montgomery's family, and even if this mystery man that called Castle is keeping them safe somehow, He has proved that he has no issues going after them, so he might go after your dad too. Or any of our families, for that matter," he concluded, looking pointedly at Ryan and Castle.

She opened and closed her mouth, not sure what to say. She had only thought about Castle's family, never even considered that her dad might just as well be a target to get to her. To her simultaneous relief and dread, Castle spoke up before she could formulate an answer.

"I was going to get someone here… I know this guy, he's in private security. I wanted to ask him to be here and look after my… Anyway, he's good, and I can tell him that I'm worried because of a criminal that got away and threatened my family."

_Impressive, considering that he came up with that in about a minute_, she thought, although it didn't get her any closer to having an idea about her father. That story might work well enough for Castle, but if her dad suddenly had a bodyguard… No, that wouldn't work.

"He'll be okay," she said aloud, "I'm already determined to get this guy, and he knows that too, so when he finds out that I'm coming after him again, he'll go straight for me, and no one else." She swallowed the 'I hope' together with the lump that had formed in her throat.

The three men looked shocked by her words, so she added, "But I don't plan to let him get me." A smirk, not too unlike Castle's, tugged at her lips.

"He'd have to come through me first," was Esposito's only comment to that, and she was grateful that he kept the sentiment out of his voice.

"And me," Ryan added.

She couldn't help glancing at Castle, finding his eyes locked on her. He didn't say it, but the way he set his jaw and squared his shoulders told her that he would do the same as the other two. She felt tears rising in her throat, battling with her resolve, and she closed her eyes and took a measured breath, swallowing the latest surge of anxiety. Then she looked at him and nodded, knowing that there was no way she'd get him to stand down, not when he'd almost taken a bullet for her already. She just hoped that it would never get to that, that none of the three would have to risk their lives for her.

"Alright," Castle said after a short silence, "that's settled, but it brings us no closer to our next move."

"I say we wait and see if DNA gives us an ID," Esposito said, "and if it does, we can officially run him. Won't be too hard to hide this from Gates… I mean, you need to know what you're looking for to see the connections in the man's life. With how he's been killed, we could probably officially run the investigation in the mob direction for a while without causing suspicion."

"And if his DNA is not in the database?" Ryan asked.

"Then we'll just keep screening surveillance tapes and continue canvassing the area for witnesses. And maybe Lanie can narrow the time of death down for us," Beckett replied, pausing for effect, "Off the record, we'll run Castle's information through every database we have. Try to see if we can find anything else."

"Don't you think he was ways to find out if we do just that?" Ryan commented warily.

"I don't know," she replied, "but we'll have to take that chance. If anything, it might flush him out, make him act. Then he might make a mistake."

"And your mystery man, Castle?" Esposito threw in.

"I have no idea about him. For all we know, he might have a hidden agenda, or he might just want to protect Beckett. I don't even know what side he's on, if any." He paused, gathering his thoughts. "All I know is that I believed him when he said that you'd get killed if you kept digging, Kate. I got you to stop, and nothing happened to you."

Beckett chose not to comment that last statement and instead focused on the first part. "Right. We shouldn't forget about him, but I don't think that he's our prime concern. Let's focus on what we know."

"Alright," Esposito said, receiving nods from everyone. "So, see you guys tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Ryan said, "I have to get home, Jenny's gonna be worried."

"Why," Castle asked, checking his watch, "it's not that–" He did a double take. "Late? When did it become ten thirty?"

"My point, exactly," Ryan responded, then addressed his partner, "Let's go."

Esposito smirked, and turned toward the door. "You coming too?" he asked as he passed Beckett.

"I'll be at the door in a moment," she said, glancing at Castle, sensing that he wanted to talk to her alone.

Sure enough, when the door had closed behind her two colleagues, Castle got up and walked around his desk, coming to a stop just a foot away from her. _Talk about personal space_, she thought.

"You're always welcome to stay here, Kate," he said softly. "I… Honestly, I don't like the idea of you staying in your apartment all alone."

"What, trying to get me in bed, Mr Castle?" she quipped, though the remarked lacked all of the spirit it would've possessed under different circumstances.

He just shook his head. "I'm worried, Kate."

"Yeah, so am I, Rick. But I'm the target here, not you or your family. I just want to make sure it stays that way."

He had no response to that, just stared at her with wide eyes.

"Hey," she said, "I'll be okay. We'll get him, remember?"

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Yeah. But Kate? Be careful."

The softness and worry in his eyes and voice almost broke her heart. She swallowed and smiled tentatively at him before she turned and walked out to meet the boys at the door.

Castle sighed and scrubbed his hands across his face before he followed her, seeing them off.

* * *

><p><strong>There's a little button down there that says "Review". Mind clicking it and leaving a few words for me? Thanks :).<strong>


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: I did promise not to keep you waiting six weeks again, didn't I? :p Although I have to issue a warning for the next update… I got the Hunger Games books yesterday and I'm going to hole up with them over the weekend, so the next chapter might take a bit. But I'll try to keep it under six weeks, hehe :p.**

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><p><em>It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time<em>

Castle showed up at the precinct at nine a.m. the next morning, carrying four instead of the regular two cups of coffee. His first glance into the bullpen revealed Beckett's vacated desk, and when he rounded the corner he saw Ryan and Esposito hunched over their desks busying themselves very obviously with paperwork.

He sidled up to them, shaking them with a low "Good morning!" out of their concentration. Ryan jumped a little–"Jeez, Castle!"–while Esposito just looked up and fixed the writer with a stare before nodding curtly.

"Coffee?" Castle asked, placing two cups in front of the detectives without waiting for their responses.

Esposito glared again while Ryan just gave Castle an irritated look with both eyebrows raised, but then both men shrugged and grabbed the paper cups, taking long drinks.

Ryan sighed when he put down his cup. "Gotta hand it to him," he said to his partner, "you just can't stay mad at someone if he brings you this kind of coffee as a peace offering."

The Latino narrowed his eyes as if in irritation, but then broke out into a grin. "Yeah, right… Unless it would make him bring you more of that stuff."

Castle heaved a relieved sigh when he realized that the two had only been messing with him. He leaned on the edge of their joined desks and asked in a whisper, "So, what's going on? Any news? And where's Beckett?"

"Nothing new," Ryan told him, sharing a frustrated glance with his partner. "We're running his name through everything we've got, but that's taking a while. Criminal record's the same as you already found out, and DMV came up empty."

"Beckett's at the morgue talking to Lanie," Esposito added, "to see if there's a hit on his DNA, or if she could narrow down the TOD. Beckett hasn't called though, so I don't think there's any news on that front. She should be back soon."

"And Gates?" Castle asked, glancing to the captain's office.

"Hasn't come in yet," said Ryan, "which is kind of unusual for her. Usually she's here at eight-thirty."

"You won't hear me complaining," Castle quipped.

Just then the elevator opened and the three held their breaths, Esposito shooting the other two a glare for jinxing their good–captainless–fortune. Castle peeked over his shoulder, relaxing when he recognized Beckett striding into the bullpen.

"Hey," he said, pushing away from the desks to join her at hers, the remaining two coffees in his hands. She'd already shed her coat when he reached her, coffee extended in his left hand.

"Thanks," she mumbled, not looking at him but still taking the offered cup from his hand and bringing it immediately to her lips, tilting her head back to take a long drink.

"So," he said, drawing out the sound, "did Lanie have anything interesting to say?"

"Nope."

"Nothing?"

"Nada."

She sat down and flipped her computer screen on, then looked up at him still standing in front of her desk. "You gonna sit down?" she asked, tilting her head towards his chair.

"Yeah, right," he responded, walking around the desk to sit down next to her. He watched her, saw her glance at the boys and, following her eyes, caught Esposito lightly shake his head. Seemingly unsatisfied, but still looking like she'd expected that response, she turned her eyes to her screen and began scrolling through something.

He waited patiently for about five minutes, until his latent anxiety got the better of him. Having no task to take care of and with Beckett obviously not communicating with him on her own, he felt, simply spoken, useless. So he inched closer to her, leaning on her desk. "What are you doing?"

She grunted in response, prompting an irritated look from him. "Beckett?"

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again, clicked a few places on the screen before switching it off again, turned to him and got up from her chair. In one smooth motion she grabbed her paper cup from the desk and took off the plastic cap, downing the contents in one gulp, then binned the empty cup.

"Let's get coffee," she said as she walked past him.

Castle was out of his chair and hot on her heels in the blink of an eye. He followed her into the break room, closing the door behind him as he watched her cross the room and mirror his action with the other door. Then she walked to the counter and started the espresso machine.

"Under wraps, Castle, you remember?" she almost hissed at him.

He was taken aback by the tone of her voice, but wrote it off as the stress that was going to get to them all, sooner or later. It was only natural that in this case it hit her sooner than the boys or him. Still his voice was a little defensive when he replied, "Of course I do."

"Then don't ask me what I'm doing!" she snapped. "We're lucky that practically no one's here yet or else we'd have to look over our shoulders every five seconds to make sure nobody catches us."

"It's not like what we're doing is illegal. It's police work, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but if Gates sees it, she'll be able to tell that we have more than we told her and she'll want to know what it is and why we haven't told her. And she's too smart to try and play a game of half truths with."

Her handling of the machine became more violent, and she slammed a cup under the valve so hard that Castle winced at the clattering sound.

One look at her face showed him precisely how stressed she was; he had become pretty good at reading her expressions and gauging her moods over the last three years, and the level of tension that was practically radiating from her posture told him that he didn't really want to know the amount that she kept inside.

He knew that he was playing with fire, and was very likely to get burned, but he reached out anyway, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder while he extracted the cup from her hand with the other. Surprisingly though, she didn't snap and didn't shake his hand off–she just stood there, stock still and tense, eyes clamped shut. The short relief at his small victory was washed away quickly as her breathing became labored.

"Kate?" he prompted. "What is it?"

He could see the effort she took to try and calm her breathing, and it took every ounce of his willpower not to wrap his arms around her. Knowing her, she wouldn't have allowed that if he had tried, no matter how low she was at the moment. Not here, not in her territory. Though he wasn't sure if, right now, there were any circumstances under which she'd allow him to hug her. The thought made him cringe.

She shook very lightly, but seemed to get a hold of herself. Her breathing evened out and she opened her eyes, though she didn't look at him when she responded.

"The man who murdered my mother is probably responsible for another death right under my nose, and I have to find and stop him before he kills anyone else or finds out that I so much as glanced at this case and–" her voice caught and she swallowed once. "And we have _nothing_ to go on and every second that we lose waiting is one more where he could find out, and… I've lost too many people to this case, Castle. I can't lose anyone else."

He was quiet for a minute, letting her words sink in. She wasn't great at sharing and although she had opened up a lot to him, admissions, confessions as raw and emotional as this one were a real rarity. And, more often than not, tied to this case. Or one of their infamous brushes with death.

"This isn't about your mom, Kate."

"Castle–" She tried to interrupt him, but he just went on.

"Not anymore, it isn't. It's not about revenge for Montgomery either. This is about you, Kate. About your life." He squeezed her shoulder. "And you don't have to stop him. Not _you_ alone. I'm with you all the way and they," he nodded towards the bullpen, "are too."

She shrugged her shoulders lightly and he let his hand slip away reluctantly. A sigh preceded her words. "I know."

If the topic hadn't been so serious, he would've laughed. "No, you don't. You think you know, but you act like you don't."

Apparently she didn't have a response to that since she kept quiet and just stared at the wall. He huffed out a breath and moved around her, replacing the cup he'd taken from her in the machine and, with a few practiced motions, filling it with her favorite. He turned and handed her the cup with the words, "You're not alone, Kate," before he left the room.

He sat down in his chair and busied himself halfheartedly with his phone, continuing even when Beckett returned from the break room a few minutes later and switched her screen back on, no trace of their previous conversation left on her face that instead displayed only grim determination. Thinking that prompting her again would be pushing his luck, he tried to focus on his current game of Angry Birds, hoping against hope that it'd distract him from the tense atmosphere.

Almost an hour passed before the boys came over to them. Gates had arrived in the meantime, thankfully saving the 'motivating speech' for another time. Ryan stood next to Castle, his back to the captain's office, while Esposito walked around and sat on the desk beside Beckett.

Ryan drew in a breath, waiting for a uniform to pass behind him, before he started, "The guy is practically a ghost. There's no DMV record, he's had no insurance since 1995 and he hasn't payed any taxes since then either."

"Plus," Esposito added, "there are no bank accounts registered to him. Which doesn't have to mean anything, but it fits into the picture."

"Are you suggesting–" All three interrupted Castle with glares, causing him to lower his voice to a whisper. "Are you suggesting that someone made him _invisible_ to the system?"

"Looks like," Beckett replied, "I mean, he couldn't have managed that all by himself. Unless of course he wanted to live in the forests or something. Which, by the looks of it, he never did."

"Yeah, he didn't look like the camping type," Castle piped in.

Beckett shot him a look. "So we know that he lived in the city once… Did you guys check with the hotels?"

"Yeah, all negative. There was no guest going by his name or his face," reported Ryan.

"We did those things separately, by the way," interjected Esposito. "Nobody can exactly associate his picture with the name."

"But that doesn't mean he didn't still live here," Castle said. "I mean, we know that people can just use a different name and make up a convincing back story and nobody ever suspects them being someone else."

"No, but nobody thought that he was dead when he vanished," whispered Ryan, "Makes it a lot harder to stay in the same city. Chances are he went somewhere else."

"In that case, did you check the airports? Flight lists?" asked Castle.

"Of course. Again, his name is not on the lists, and nobody matching his description has landed in the last few days," came Esposito's response.

Beckett opened her mouth but was cut short by her phone ringing. She picked up the receiver. "Beckett. … Lanie, what … Really? And that's … I see … Thanks, Lanie. Bye."

She put the receiver down and looked up at three expectant pairs of eyes. "Lanie's narrowed down the time of death to 24 hours before his body was found."

"That's…"

"Better than what we had before," Esposito said, interrupting Castle. He grabbed a whiteboard marker and took the two steps to the murder board to update the information. He had not even begun to write when Gates' head poked out of her office. "Do we have new information, Detectives?"

Beckett, well hidden by Ryan's back, sighed once before she got up and spoke, "The ME narrowed down the time of death to about 24 hours before the body was found. She said with the cold and everything that was the best she could do. Also," she added as an afterthought, "she confirmed that he's been killed where we found him."

"And what do you plan to do with that information, Detective?"

"Now that we have a definite time frame, I think we should resume screening those surveillance tapes, and we should talk to the neighbors again. Maybe they'll remember something if we give them a more concrete time."

"That's your plan?"

"It's not like we have a wealth of information to go on, _sir_."

"Alright. Keep me posted."

"Yes, sir."

Beckett rolled her eyes as Gates turned her back on the team. "'kay. Espo, let's go."

Three pairs of eyes turned on her, all equally confused. "Where?" asked the addressed detective.

"To talk to the 'neighbors' again," Beckett replied, the airquotes that she'd left out for the captain's benefit now clearly audible. When Esposito's questiong look didn't vanish, she glanced at the other two and only then seemed to notice their confusion. She sighed. "Look, it's either talk to the people or screen tapes, and I really can't sit around here any longer. And Esposito has been there before, he knows the people."

While those were certainly logical reasons to go out and to take Esposito along instead of him, it still felt wrong to Castle. Like he'd been banned for doing something wrong. He had thought the previous night that things were going relatively well between them, given the circumstances. Yet this move didn't help to alleviate the insecurity he felt about all he'd done, which had been there from the minute he had received the call. He was still positive that he had made the right choice then, but he started to question if he should've come clean sooner.

That Beckett didn't look at him while she donned her coat and grabbed her things didn't help either.

"Good luck," he called after them when they'd reached the elevator.

Esposito turned back and nodded. "You too."

* * *

><p>Castle yawned. Ryan and he had spent almost two hours flat screening traffic camera footage at high speed, and they hadn't made the slightest bit of progress. Not that they'd expected to make any, no. But in the absence of anything else to do…<p>

Since they didn't know what they were looking for, they'd started taking down license plates–or rather fragments thereof–along with a guess at make, model and color (which was either light or dark, given that they only had black-and-white footage). In one word, it was frustrating.

He shifted in his chair and pushed his shoulders back, eliciting a series of pops from his vertebrae. He groaned and massaged his neck, then got up.

"I'm gonna get fresh coffee," he said, grabbing the pot from the tabletop.

Ryan just nodded absentmindedly and Castle left the room, ambling over to the break room and his target, the coffee maker. Going through the motions of getting the coffee started, he was surprised to notice that his mind was, at least for a moment, completely blank. The welcome respite was over too quickly though, as the case crashed back down on him and he was literally lost in the mass of thoughts that all seemed to start at the same instant.

Taking deep breaths to try and calm his abruptly spiked heart rate, he began to push back the thoughts one by one. He briefly wondered if this was anything like what Beckett had felt like during the sniper case, or if it had been much worse for her. He couldn't imagine how it could be any worse though, and he knew that he had to be grateful for that. He dismissed the thought and jammed it back with the others.

When Castle had managed to contain his anxiety attack after what felt like an eternity for him, he noticed the light on the coffee maker going out, signaling that the coffee was ready. Sighing, the writer removed the pot from the machine and returned to the other room.

Fifteen minutes later another bunch of vehicles had joined their list, but nothing had sprung out at them. Ryan had just refilled his mug when Castle's cell phone went off. He pulled it from his pocket and pressed the green 'accept' button without looking at the caller ID.

"Richard Castle? … Jake! Hi. … Yeah … That would be great. … Yes. … Thank you. See you in ten."

Ryan had paused the video and looked over at Castle with his eyebrows raised.

"That was my guy in… you know," Castle said, almost whispering. "I'm gonna meet him for lunch and… explain… the situation."

"You're going for lunch… to do that?" Ryan seemed skeptical, but then shrugged. "Well, good luck then. I've got this."

"Thanks, man," Castle replied, downing the rest of his coffee and then hurried out.

* * *

><p>Talking to a whole block of people who hadn't seen a thing was flat out frustrating. Beckett wanted to hit something, but the only two options were Esposito or the elevator wall, so instead she opted for throwing her head back and expelling an angry breath.<p>

"It sucks, I know," her coworker said beside her. "Why can't these guys invite witnesses when they're going to murder someone?"

She rolled her eyes at the joke, but had to fight the cynical chuckle that wanted to escape her lips. "I don't know, Espo, maybe it's because being witness to a murder is something that rather scares people off," she shot back.

"Yeah, maybe."

They fell silent again, waiting for the elevator to complete the ride from eighteenth to ground floor. It seemed to take an eternity for every inch of the way.

If only the people had been uncooperative, then she could've blamed it on them. But no, most of them had been beyond polite, offering them coffee, tee, cookies or even a piece of cake; yet none of them could offer the one thing she wanted, needed: information. They just hadn't seen a thing.

Realistically, she hadn't expected anything else, but deep down she had hoped that one of them might have provided them with the crucial break, the few words to describe their killer or maybe tell them that they'd seen a car come down the road from the crime scene late at night… But she'd been disappointed.

She held no illusions about Ryan and Castle finding anything on the tapes either. Really. They didn't even know what they were looking for. Yet a small part of her placed hope in her partner's sometimes uncanny ability to notice things that were just a tiny bit out of place.

Her partner. Thinking about him almost sent her thoughts back into last night's (and this morning's) tumbling chaos. She wasn't sure how she felt about him, or what he'd done. She was hurt that he'd kept this huge secret from her when he knew too well how she felt about it. Damn his reasons, he'd all but lied to her, and she had trusted him. That the annoying little voice in her head told her that she too held a secret, one that could–and not too unlikely would–hurt him just the same as she'd been hurt by his, only served to push her further into her defensive mode, ready to lash out at anyone or anything that dared to challenge her.

Her secret. It wasn't like she'd held out on him on purpose. She wasn't ready yet, though she'd made amazing progress at putting herself back together. She just wasn't quite there yet. And she'd told him that she needed time. That she needed to close this… _this_ case. He knew, and he'd chosen to stay. And it had been good. They had been good. And then he had to go and mess it all up.

She swallowed, sensing that she was teetering too close to the edge. Not now. Not here. Not… _Keep it together, Beckett_.

The elevator pinged, notifying its two passengers that they had arrived at their final destination. As they got out and walked through the lobby, Beckett was grateful that Esposito just kept quiet. She didn't know if she could handle anyone's concern at the moment.

The ride back to the precinct was about as uneventful as the countless conversations they'd had within the past three hours. It was closing on two p.m. when she pulled into her customary spot in front of the building. The wind had picked up a little strength, and she dimly remembered that the forecast had predicted flurries for the evening and the next day.

The precinct lobby was warm though, and the elevator–old as it may have been–went up to homicide considerably faster than the one in the apartment building had. When they exited on their floor and walked into the bullpen, her eyes searched for Castle all on their own. She spotted Ryan sitting in the conference room in front of the screen, an empty coffee pot and two mugs sitting on the table along with several sheets of paper. Without thinking she altered her course and walked straight towards the room.

"Hey, Ryan," she said upon opening the door. "Anything?"

"As if," the other detective replied wearily.

"Yo, bro," came Esposito's voice from behind Beckett.

Prompted by Beckett's raised eyebrows, Ryan continued, "So far I've noted about 200 different cars between ten and ten thirty p.m. on Sunday night. All with scraps of their plate numbers, as far as I've been able to decipher them."

"Then you've got more than we do," Beckett said and leaned forward, resting her hands on the back of a chair. "Where's Castle?"

Ryan gave her a look. "He went home. Had a lunch meeting with–" he lowered his voice–"his guy. Called me an hour ago and said that he'd go home because he had some things to prepare. Said we shouldn't wait for him." When she just stared at him, he added, "Didn't he tell you?"

"No," she said, frowning. That wasn't like Castle. He'd always called her to let her know he'd gone home or anywhere else… At least Ryan had talked to him so they knew that he was alright. She felt the urge to take out her phone and call him herself, but reigned herself back in remembering that she still wasn't sure how she felt towards him. Shaking the thought out of her head, she resumed, "You need any help here?"

"Since we aren't exactly looking for anything specific, I don't think it makes a lot of sense for all of us to stare at one screen, but there's still footage from another traffic camera and from the subway station…"

Beckett and Esposito sighed simultaneously. "Alright. Esposito, could you check out the other traffic camera? Just do the same as Ryan."

"You really think that makes sense?"

"It's not really like we have anything."

"True." A sigh. "I'll get to it."

"Thanks."

"What about you?" Ryan interjected.

"I'll go and stare at the board for a bit. I have a feeling we missed something."

Ryan shrugged and turned back to the screen. "Good luck."

Beckett and Esposito left the room and split up, heading off to their respective desks. Beckett removed her coat and draped it over the back of her chair, then walked around to sit on the side of the desk while she looked at the murder board.

Information was few and far between, almost lost among the white of the board. The victim's reconstructed photo with a big red question mark underneath, the bank clerk who had found him listed as a 'person of interest', complete with picture, a blue time line extending to fourty-eight hours before the body had been found with the second twenty-four hours marked in red as kill zone.

They had nothing. Everything on the board amounted to nothing that was even remotely helpful for finding out who had killed Weston.

She replayed the information she'd received from Castle and subsequently from the police and associated databases, which they had been unable to write down anywhere it could have been seen.

Business lawyer. Mob ties. Prison. Money laundering. Indirect connections to Raglan and McCallister during the time the dragon came along and blackmailed the dirty cops. Fallen off the grid in 1995. Never resurfaced. DMV negative.

_DMV negative_. She almost smacked herself on the forehead. Although he hadn't been listed as owner of any bank account nor for paying taxes or insurance fees, clearly nobody had made any effort to clear up his past. Not if Castle had been able to find the connection all by himself.

So no entry in the DMV meant naturally that the man never had a driver's license before 1995, and it wasn't very likely that he'd gotten one after he'd vanished. This meant that he couldn't have taken a car to where he'd been killed, so…

She turned towards Esposito and called, "Hey Esposito, could you check with the major cab companies if anyone dropped off our victim in the vicinity of the crime scene on Sunday?"

His concentration disturbed, the man looked up from his computer screen and blinked slowly, then frowned. "Damn, why didn't we think of that sooner?"

"No idea, really," she replied, eyebrows raised. "We had everything covered, but not the cabs… Whatever. You do that, and I'll see if I can coax anything else out of the board."

She turned back, not waiting for her colleagues confirming nod, and attempted to lose herself in the tangled web of information on the board. Except there wasn't one. Usually the board was almost full after the first day, and there was really a tangled mess to make sense of. Often enough she found something they'd overlooked, some piece that had been missing from the big picture, just by staring at the board for long enough.

But now the board was fairly empty, devoid of anything to untangle. Beckett found herself in the rather uncharacteristic role of looking for what _wasn't_ there instead of what was hiding beneath the rest. True, she'd done that before, and successfully too, but this time she found that she just couldn't concentrate on the facts before her and what was missing.

Instead her thoughts drifted toward her absent partner every time she let up for as much as a second. She shook them off the first few times, but realized after the tenth slip that she wouldn't be able to concentrate on her job if her subconscious was acting up like this. So she allowed the thoughts to enter her mind, trying to sort through them.

Dr Burke had demonstrated that talking about her worries, and her thoughts in general, he'd said, forced her to really think about them. When she said she was worried about something, he'd ask why. She'd learned quickly that he wouldn't let her off the hook with an "I don't know." He'd probe and prod her until he'd get to the core of her problem; and, more importantly even, until _she_ got to that problem's core.

He wasn't just taking what she said and putting on a great show of deduction, describing exactly what her problem was. She was sure that he had a good idea of it, and often enough he'd drop hints to keep her on track, but what he really did was encourage her to think about the problem. While she had hated that in the beginning, after a couple of sessions she'd become more used to it, and now a good part of her progress was based on successful introspection.

Talking about it wasn't an option though. She couldn't run out in the middle of the case, and she didn't want to talk about it with another cop, least of all her fellow detectives. It wasn't that she didn't trust them–she did–but that they knew Castle too, and they had no business being involved in her relationship with him in this way. Talking to her therapist was a different thing, he stood outside of it all, wasn't invested in the situation.

One word flashed through her mind. _Writing_. Burke had told her that writing down her thoughts would work like talking about them, if not better. She remembered him saying something about structuring thoughts, and since she couldn't start whispering to herself, writing seemed to be her best shot to bring some order to the chaos inside her head.

She pushed herself off of the desk and sat down in her chair, pulling a few sheets of blank paper from a drawer, and uncapped a pen. She smirked lightly at the irony of the situation: here she was, attempting to solve her problems with a writer by writing about them.

Her thoughts were still a jumble, so she spent a minute to identify and pick one that she thought was most important. Secrets. Him keeping his rogue investigation from her until he couldn't possibly put off telling her.

She stopped, looking at the words on the paper before her. She hadn't even noticed writing them, but apparently she had. Then she frowned, imagining a session with Dr Burke, her just having spoken the thought out loud.

_Why?_, she wrote next to her first thought, then added, _Why am I upset about it?_

She thought about the question for a moment, and the longer she took the less her thoughts were tumbling over each other. She remembered the previous evening, remembered the hurt and… Hurt. Why had it hurt her?

_He lied to me_, joined the other words on the paper. _He told me that I had to step back because I had nothing to go on, and all the while he did, and he worked on it._

Burke's part. _Why did he do that?_

_Because he was told that I'd be killed if I got near the case_, she wrote, recalling his explanations.

_So he was protecting you. Was that wrong?_

Was it? _Of course. I'm the cop, I have the gun. I have to protect him, not the other way around._

_Yes, but he's saved your life before, you've told me that. He even tried to get to you when you were shot, tackled you to the ground. What makes this time different, what makes it wrong?_

If she hadn't been chewing on the question as intently as she was, she would've noticed how strangely accurate the parts she made up for her therapist actually were.

_Because–_ Because what? She dug deeper into her thoughts. Because he had risked his life? She'd thrown that at him after he'd told her, but was it really the reason it was wrong?

She slowly shook her head. No, it wasn't. He'd risked his life to save hers before, staying in town despite the threat of a dirty bomb, or taking out Lockwood in the middle of a heated gunfight serving as just two examples. So if it wasn't that he'd risked his life, then what?

She tossed the question around in her mind a few times, comparing all the times he'd saved her life before with this one. In the end, she only came up with two answers. Two answers that she realized, once she wrote them, were actually one and the same.

_Because he did it behind my back, without my knowledge. And because I wasn't there to have his back, in case he'd needed me._

She swallowed. The first part stung, and her feeling of having been betrayed was rooted in it, but she realized that it was only the smaller part of her emotions. The far bigger part sat in the second answer.

Every time that he'd saved her life before, they'd gone into the situation together, as cop and shadow at first, as partners later on. Every time she'd known at least as much about the danger they were walking in as he. Every time he'd been walking into danger for her she'd known about it, and she'd been there to get him out again.

But this time she hadn't, and she realized that it hurt far worse than the feeling of betrayal. Worrying about what might have happened to him while he was trying to protect her, imagining scenarios where she tried to explain to a devastated Alexis that her father had died trying to protect her, Kate, and she hadn't even known about it until it had been too late… She shivered at the cold crawling up her spine. Not that road.

This was the core of the problem. She underlined the second answer, then added, _Now what?_

She had options, a lot probably, but which ones could she realistically consider? She might've identified the core of the problem, but in her experience that didn't just make the problem disappear. No, she had to work on it, find a way to solve it.

Esposito's voice ungently yanked her out of her thoughts. "Yo, Beckett!"

"Yeah?" she responded, looking up to see him walking towards her desk.

"Any luck with the board?" he asked, gesturing to the papers in front of her with the folder in his hand.

"No, just some notes," she replied quickly, leaning forward to cover her mental discussion with her forearms. "What've you got?"

"Just heard back from the cab companies." She raised a brow in question. "Nobody matching our vic's description has been dropped off anywhere in three blocks around the crime scene. I asked them to check with all their drivers for the whole of Sunday, but that's gonna take time."

"Of course," she said.

"I'll just write it down," Esposito said. After a moment of scribbling he added, "Why are we even checking the traffic cameras? We know he didn't have a license, and he didn't take a cab there, so…"

"We're looking for anything out of the ordinary. Anything that might be suspicious. I don't like it either, but we really don't have a lot of options here."

"No, we don't," he agreed glumly and returned to his desk and computer.

Beckett tried to get back onto her previous train of thoughts. How to solve the problem? She bounced the question a few times in her head before she came to the conclusion that what had happened had happened and couldn't be changed anymore. However much she didn't like what he'd done, nothing was gained by worrying about "what if"s. She had to move forward. She had to talk to him. It concerned him as much as her, and she owed it to him as much as herself to try and work through this together. As partners. After all, that was what they were best at, right? _If it's other people's problems_, she thought almost cynically.

She looked at her watch and was surprised to see that it was closing on five p.m. It had been just about two when Esposito and she had come back, and she hadn't done much except looking at the board for a while and then sorting out her thoughts. Surely that couldn't have taken three hours? _Obviously it has_, she scolded herself.

Beckett got up and quickly donned her coat, making sure that her cell phone and car keys were still in her pockets. Then she noticed Esposito frowning at her across the room.

"I'm gonna go check in on Castle," she said, "You two shouldn't stay too long either, I don't think anything will come out of staring at those tapes for the rest of today. Maybe we can go at it tomorrow with a fresh mind."

His frown relaxed slightly and he shrugged. "Sure, I've just been waiting for an excuse to drop these tapes into the bin."

She smirked a little at his joking comeback, then turned around and walked to the elevator. She was going to talk to him. And she wouldn't hold back.

* * *

><p>She never would've suspected that a single motion could require so much effort. No matter how clearly she pictured her hand rising from where it hung limply beside her to ring the doorbell, it just wouldn't move. She let out a breath, trying to clear her mind. She'd been through this. She'd thought it through, she'd made up her mind, now all she needed to do was raise her damn hand and ring the bell. Why couldn't she do that?<p>

Her phone's vibration startled her out of her thoughts. _Please let this be a break_, she thought, plucking it from her pocket–a motion against which her hand did not protest, strangely enough–and answering it without so much as glancing at the screen.

"Beckett."

"Beckett?" came Castle's voice from the other end. _Oh great_. "Are you still at the precinct?"

"No, I'm actually–" _right outside your door_. Damn honesty reflex.

She saw a shadow approach the door, then heard the lock being released. Had she just said that?

The door opened to a man in black pants and a black T-shirt. A large man. He looked her up and down, then called over his shoulder, "Rick! Detective Beckett is here."

Footsteps approached and within seconds, the man stepped aside to make room for Castle, who still held his phone to his ear. She lowered her own and tapped the red button to end the call. Then she looked at him, aware of the uncertainty written all over her face. A long second passed before she could muster up the courage to say something. But he had called her, so she could do this. She _wanted_ to do this. Do this right.

"Hey, Castle." Now that wasn't so bad.

"Hey," he replied automatically. Traces of his usual grin tugged at his lips. Was he happy to see her? "Come in. This," he gestured to the man who'd opened the door, "is Jake Mansfield. He's gonna keep watch here."

"Nice to meet you, Mr Mansfield."

"Detective."

"You know…" Castle started, but then interrupted himself. "Why are you here?"

"I, er… just… to… catch you up on the case." Great. Keep digging your own hole.

To her relief, he only shrugged in response. "That's actually what I was calling you about. See, I've got a theory, and I need to know something… Shall we sit down?" He motioned towards the couch.

She followed him, sitting in one of the armchairs. "Yes?"

"Now that we have an approximate time of death, have you checked with the cab companies if our victim–"

"–has taken a cab to the crime scene? Yes, we have, and no, he hasn't. According to the companies, twenty-six people have been dropped off within a three block radius on Sunday. None of them matches his description."

Castle seemed to have expected this, since he didn't show any sign of disappointment. "Obviously that wasn't your theory," she stated.

"No, actually that was confirmation for it," he replied. Lowering his voice, he continued, "See, DMV came up blank, which means he can't have driven there. I doubt that he walked, and since he didn't take a cab, that means…"

She up looked into his eyes, seeing the spark dancing there, and then understanding flashed through her. "He took the subway," they said in unison, tentative smiles forming on both their faces.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: It's not even been a month since the last chapter :p.**

* * *

><p><em>It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right<em>

_I hope you had the time of your life_

Beckett felt strangely elated sitting there in Castle's living room, looking into his eyes across the coffee table. Just looking into their clear blue did something to her, gave her strength, bolstered her confidence. Coaxed a smile from somewhere within her and tugged at her lips until she stopped trying to contain it.

She had made a decision and then come to talk to him about it, but he had somehow managed to completely distract her from that objective. _Not 'somehow'_, she corrected herself. He was just being himself, the Castle she'd known and worked with for the last couple of years. The one that she now realized she needed back. The one she _wanted_ back.

She found herself unable to tear her gaze away from his face. His smile was widening by the second and hers hurried to keep up.

For a moment she felt like everything was back the way it had been only a few days ago, listening to him building theory and sharing his insight, feeling the connection between them click into place. Then she reminded herself that it would never be quite the same. However this was going to turn out, things would be different afterwards. She knew that it was largely up to her how different it would be. And him too. They'd have to put some work into it, and in this moment, she felt that she was up to the task. Whatever she needed to do, she would get her partner back.

Gathering her resolve, she pushed herself up. "Come on, Castle," she said.

He followed her automatically. "Where are we going?"

"Precinct," she answered, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket. "We have footage from the subway station that needs screening."

He looked like he wanted to object, but then apparently changed his mind and headed for the hall closet.

She was about halfway into composing a text to Ryan and Esposito when she started to question the amount of good it would do to call the two detectives back in. Though four pairs of eyes were usually better than two, she knew that Castle's attention for detail was likely going to make up for the missing two pairs. Might as well let them catch some sleep. And besides, there weren't going to be many people in at this hour, so if she only took Castle she might get a decent opportunity to talk to him.

Of course they could talk in the car, but, given their history of conversations about the case and their relationship, she was afraid that the confined space of her vehicle would have a negative impact on them. No, they needed space to talk this out. Or at least she needed it.

She discarded the message and put her phone away again, turning to watch Castle while he put on shoes and a coat. When she looked back toward the living room, she saw the man, Mansfield, standing in the half-shadow of one of the columns. She had to fight her instinct that told her to reach for her gun.

He pushed off of the column and walked over to them with measured steps. When he'd opened the door she had been so surprised by his presence and Castle's call that the impression he'd left in her memory was mostly blurry and tall. And black clothes. Now she let her eyes roam his body, sizing him up like she would a suspect.

Tall was right. And big. She estimated him at probably six and a half feet with very broad shoulders, so much that he positively dwarfed Castle as he stopped a short distance away from them. A simple, tight-fitting black T-shirt, black utility pants with a number of pockets, and black boots as well as a shoulder holster comprised his clothes and equipment as far as she could see. The thickness of his arms and neck, even in the relaxed state he was in, clearly belonged to a man who worked out a lot, though they didn't have the typical bodybuilder look to them. Probably hand to hand combat training, martial arts and the like. When her eyes finally reached his face, she was surprised at how pleasant he looked. Clean-shaven with short dark hair in a kind of military style, dark brown eyes that looked very alert, and lips curled into a slight, handsome smirk.

He didn't say anything, but the look in his eyes told her that he had acknowledged her 'inspection'. "You're going out?" he said to Castle.

"Yeah, we have to go check out a possible lead," the writer replied while he buttoned up his coat. He and Beckett shared a look before he added, "Don't worry. I'll be safe with her."

For a second Beckett felt insulted that Mansfield apparently had doubted Castle's safety if he left the loft with her, but she reminded herself that he'd been hired to protect Castle's family, and he was just doing his job. She met his eyes again, standing straight, arms folded across her chest. Something seemed to amuse him, since the corners of his mouth were turning upward again. However, he gave her and then Castle each a firm nod and went to open the door.

They didn't speak until they were sitting in her car, two minutes into the drive to the precinct. Surprisingly it was Beckett who couldn't stand the silence any longer.

"So… Your friend's quite a package," she said, trying to keep her voice light.

"I saw you checking him out," Castle replied, but to her relief his tone was as light as hers, and it didn't sound forced. "Like what you see?"

"I wasn't 'checking him out'," she retorted, "I was trying to gauge if he's fit to do the job you hired him for."

"Oh, he's fit."

"Yeah."

Silence. She didn't like it.

"So… What's his story?"

"Hum?"

"You know… What has he done before, how did he get into private security, how did you meet him…?"

She looked over when they had to stop at a red light, catching a glimpse of a smile on his face.

"I noticed his hair. Army?"

"Marines, Afghanistan. He was injured pretty severely and flown home, got into some kind of arrangement so he could spend the rest of his time with the reserves. He mentioned seeing some things that he'd rather not have and he was glad about getting out. When his time was up, he went into private security, like many former soldiers tend to do, only he's good. Like, really good. He moved up pretty quickly, then five years ago he opened up his own firm. Smallish, but high-end service. All of his men are ex-marines, well trained."

"How did you meet him?" she asked as the lights changed.

"Ran into him at one of the mayor's benefits, where he was in charge of security. That was before he had his own business. I was looking for ideas for my next book, and we ended up talking quite a bit." She glanced over at him and he met her eyes, grinning. "He likes my books, too."

She rolled her eyes. "Is that why you trust him?"

"Mayor Weldon trusts him," he returned, slightly defensive.

"And you trust the mayor."

"I do."

They were silent for a minute, but she didn't like how the atmosphere between them had changed. It was a testament to the fact that they weren't good, despite how badly they both wanted to be. Although, she reminded herself, since Castle saw the mayor as a friend, he would've taken that comment seriously anyway. He was, after all, a very loyal friend. She'd had to deal with that almost a year before, when Castle's old high school writing mentor had been a suspect in the murder of his wife.

"Look," she began, "I don't mean to be negative." She risked a glance to the side and found him staring straight ahead at the road. "I just mean that we have to be very, _very_ careful who we place our trust in. And these private security guys, they're essentially mercenaries. Their loyalty belongs to money, not people."

Great. _I don't mean to be negative?_ She shook her head in dismay. Just now she'd all but accused him of letting a potential traitor into his home. Not that she thought she was wrong, but taking the direct approach maybe hadn't been the best choice.

When they stopped at another light he spoke again, still looking ahead. "You're wrong." There was nothing accusatory in his voice. "You know what the marines say?"

She looked over and found his gaze trained on her. She raised her eyebrows in response, not knowing where he was going with this.

"Semper fi. Short for 'semper fidelis', which is Latin for 'always loyal'."

"So?"

"So. After I met him, I talked him into giving me a little insight into the business. He took me along two, three times." He paused, looking her straight in the eyes. "One time he was guarding a senator who had received a couple of death threats. We were out in a park, just the senator, he, one of his men and I. I was observing from a distance, actually. I saw a man come up to him. He led the man away, but that guy started talking in a hushed voice and I got curious and followed them. I caught the last part of what he said."

Honking from behind interrupted him and Beckett looked up to find that the lights had changed to green. Reluctantly she looked back on the street and drove on, while he continued, "The man offered him money, lots of money, if he looked away for just a moment. I think that was the last thing the guy said for quite a while."

This time she looked straight ahead, though she felt his eyes boring into the side of her skull.

"That, Detective, is why I trust this man to watch over my family."

She only nodded, unable to form a verbal response.

They spent the remaining few minutes of the drive in an easy silence. The desk sergeant eyed them curiously, seeing as Beckett had left only about an hour and a half earlier, but didn't comment on it. They rode the lift in silence too, and Beckett found herself glancing at Castle a few times, as if to make sure that he was still there.

They split up wordlessly as they stepped out onto their floor, Castle heading for the break room while Beckett went to her desk to boot up her computer. She quickly located the surveillance videos and started the one from the night in question. As she had hoped, Castle arrived just a minute later, placing a mug of fresh, steaming coffee in front of her. She smiled gratefully at him while she wrapped her hands around it, letting the heat seep into her body.

They spent over an hour watching people zip around at double speed before they saw him. Castle was the first to spot him, startling her with his sudden, "There! There he is."

She immediately paused the video and peered closer. At first she didn't see him, but when Castle pointed out the head, between a few others, she recognized him. She jotted down the timecode on her notepad before resuming the video, now back at normal speed. In unspoken agreement neither followed the victim but focussed their eyes on the crowd around the man that presumably had gotten off the same train as he.

About a minute later she thought that this time she'd be lucky, but in the same moment that she hit pause, Castle quietly exclaimed, "Ha!" They turned their heads and shared a look before they returned their attention back to the video.

"That one?" Castle asked, pointing at a man who was trying to push through the people. The victim had just passed underneath the camera a few seconds ago.

"Yep," she replied, hitting play.

The following seconds confirmed their suspicion, as the second man weaved his way through the crowd, apparently not caring how much force he used to push people aside. He clearly was following someone. Beckett paused the video again when the man had almost reached the camera. An almost perfect facial shot.

A few clicks and keystrokes later the suspect's picture was printed out and joined the victim's on the still rather empty murder board.

"Now, do we run him through facial recognition?" Castle asked, clearly in higher spirits now that they finally had something that looked like a lead.

Beckett cocked her head and regarded him with humor sparkling in her eyes. Despite what this picture meant for her–one step closer to catching a killer, who might be the one who had tried to kill her, and thus also getting one step closer to facing Him–she couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm.

"Yeah, we do," she replied, smirking as she opened the criminal records database program, then added, "Go get some more coffee."

…

It was close to ten p.m. when Castle checked his watch for what felt like the thousandth time. Over two hours and at least one liter of coffee for each of them and they weren't one step closer to identifying the man who they were relatively sure was their killer. Actually, they were a few hundred steps away from their starting point, only if that was going to help them was a question he couldn't answer.

"How many still to go?" he asked tiredly, tipping his head back to drain the last drops from his mug.

"Hundred and twelve," she answered, her eyes glued to the screen.

"I don't know about you, but I could use something to eat," he said, looking wistfully at the empty bowl on her desk. They had devoured her M&M's half an hour ago.

"Mhm."

He got up and made for the break room, hoping that someone had left a few snacks stashed into one of the cupboards or to maybe even find something edible in the fridge. Since it was only three days since New Year's, he figured that chances for some leftover snacks were considerable.

Getting the espresso machine started was by now second nature to him and took only moments. While he waited for the coffee he started to randomly open the cupboards. Against his hopes though he only came up with a lone Snickers bar and an all too small bag of salted peanuts. The fridge was even emptier, not considering the two cartons of milk, of which he removed one. If he couldn't have food, he thought, then he would at least have a decent latte.

He fished another cup off the shelf and let the machine brew a second espresso while he busied himself to produce the proper amount of steamed milk. After finishing both coffees he picked up the mugs and the meager snacks he'd found and headed back.

"Remind me why the NYPD still doesn't have real facial recognition software like the FBI," he called out to her, carefully watching the cups in his hands so he wouldn't spill any of the hot liquid.

"Maybe that's because we're _not_ the FBI," she retorted. "At least we don't have to work through stacks of files like we did three years ago."

"True," he replied, "but still, it would be nice not having to wade through hundreds of records. And it can't really cost that much, can it?"

"Honestly, I don't–"

He stopped dead in his tracks when she interrupted herself so suddenly. "Beckett?" He repeated her name when he didn't receive a response, a little more urgently, though for some reason his feet refused to move him toward her. "Kate? What is it?"

"Castle…" Her voice was soft when she responded, though not weak.

Hearing her speak propelled him forward again, his feet moving on his own. Had she…?

He rounded the corner of her desk and stopped by her side, looking down at her. Noticing his approach she tore her eyes away from the screen and looked up at him.

"Found him," she said, indicating the monitor with a nod of her head.

A face stared back at him from the screen as he turned his head. It was definitely the man from the video, he thought. His eyes flicked to the column on the right of the picture. _Name: Preston, Anthony_. He skipped the physical details section and started to scan the record when Beckett spoke.

"He was the prime suspect in a murder investigation. And although the investigating detective and even the DA were convinced that he was the killer, they never found any proof."

"Then why… he was booked for assault?"

"Yep, according to the report here," she indicated a longer text attached to the file, "that was the only thing they had proof of. Beat a man bloody the day after the murder." She paused and he looked over, meeting her eyes as she added, "Over a seat at a bar."

He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Fits," he said, "I mean, what with how," he lowered his voice, "Weston was beaten up."

She glanced around but didn't see another soul. "You don't have to whisper when nobody's around," she replied.

"Better safe than sorry," he returned. "Alright, so what do we do now?"

"We see if he still lives in the city," she said, opening up the DMV database and entering his name into the form. A few clicks later (really, why were there twenty Anthony Prestons in New York?) she found his entry. The registered address wasn't the same as the one in his criminal record, but was still in the city.

She looked up at him with a slightly triumphant smile on her lips. "Now we're going to take him in."

"Wait a second," he said. Realizing that he was still holding the coffees and snacks, he put them down on her desk. "Just you and me?"

"Yeah," she replied, already getting up. "Why?"

"Shouldn't we wait for tomorrow?" he asked, his brows raised.

"We can't wait, Castle," she replied, her voice rising a little. "He could leave the city any minute, so the longer we wait the higher the risk that we don't get him. I'm going there, _now_." She moved over to the elevator, already pressing the button. "You coming?"

"Of course I'm coming," he shot back, irritation creeping into his own voice. "But at least call for backup, then."

"And wait until they get there?" she asked, almost glaring at him. "You're my backup, unless you're gonna keep standing in my way."

"Kate!" he said firmly, just as the elevator bell chimed. He caught her arm as she slipped between the opening doors and forced her to turn back and look at him.

"Castle, what the hell?" she snarled.

"Kate," he replied, his tone softer but still unrelenting, fixing her eyes with a piercing stare. "I haven't been doing all this for the past four months just so you can get yourself killed because you were too hasty to wait for backup."

She opened her mouth as if to fire back, but not a sound came out. She closed her mouth and he briefly noticed the heat fading from her eyes before she looked away.

"Let's just call the boys, they'll be there even before we will," he added.

She sighed heavily, then nodded her assent. "I'll call Espo, he can pick up Ryan on the way."

"Okay," he said, releasing her arm. They stepped into the elevator side by side and he pressed the button for the parking garage while she pulled out her phone.

…

Twenty minutes later Beckett was pulling up in a parking spot across the street from the man's address, an older, four story building that definitely had seen better days. Shortly flashing headlights caught her attention and she returned the signal before turning off the engine and unbuckling her seat belt. They got out and crossed the street, meeting the other two detectives at the corner of the building.

"How'd you find him?" Ryan asked. "And who is he anyway?"

"Subway camera," she replied. "We all figured out that he didn't drive there, but for some reason we only checked the cabs, while Castle came up with the subway."

"We found Weston on the tape and then this guy," Castle piped in. "But then we only had a picture, so we had to go through–"

"Yeah, well, bottom line: we found him. He was prime suspect for another murder years ago, but they could never prove it was him," she interjected.

"So how do we do it?" asked Esposito.

"If the man isn't completely stupid, and since it seems that he almost got away with murder I'd say he isn't, he'll have an escape plan. That is if he isn't too confident that we won't be able to prove anything," said Beckett. "His apartment is on the second floor… We have to cover the fire escape."

"Which side is it?" asked Ryan.

"Let's see," said Castle, walking over to the door to study the row of bell buttons. "If there's any common sense behind this order, it would be there," he concluded, pointing to the side of the building where they'd been standing.

"Okay, then you and Ryan stay down here and watch that," Beckett said to him, then turned to Esposito. "You're coming up with me."

"Roger, boss," the Latino replied.

The two of them turned toward the building's entrance but were stopped by Castle's voice.

"Shouldn't we be wearing our vests? Just to be safe."

"And tip him off before he even opens the door?" she asked. "Besides, he doesn't seem like the type to shoot people."

"Still, it might be better–"

"We'll be fine, Castle," said Esposito, cutting the writer off. "We're cops. _Trained_ cops."

With that they walked off and entered the building, leaving Castle and Ryan alone out on the street. Neither heard Castle mutter, "Yeah, and he might just be a _trained_ killer."

…

Beckett and Esposito took the stairs up to second floor. The January night was dark already, but the few working lights on the staircase and in the hallway lent a different darkness to the building. When they emerged in the middle of the hall they quickly scanned the floor in both directions but found nothing alarming.

She looked at the closest door to her right, then counted down the left side until she found the correct one. Nudging Esposito with her elbow, she nodded at the apartment in question and silently moved over, while he hung back a little, gazing down the corridor in the opposite direction.

Once they were positioned on either side of the door, she pulled out her gun and quietly flipped the safety, which he hurried to repeat. Pointing the gun down at the floor she leaned over and slammed her left fist against the door several times.

"Mr Preston, NYPD! Open up!"

When they received no response, Esposito hammered the butt of his gun against the door. "Mr Preston, open the door!"

There was again no response, so Beckett started to move in front of the door to kick it in when suddenly the wood blasted outward into the hall roughly at chest height and a shower of splinters rained down on them.

"Shotgun!" shouted Esposito after taking in the size of the hole.

Both of them immediately crouched down, making sure to stay clear of the door. They waited for another shot, but instead heard the sound of breaking glass. They shared a look before Esposito moved in front of the door and then rammed his shoulder against the lock, unhinging the tattered remains in the process, and rolled inside.

Beckett moved up quickly, shoulder against the doorframe, and peeked inside. It took her only a moment to recognize the broken window and she moved in swiftly, only sparing glances to the sides.

Meanwhile Esposito got back on his feet and moved through the other side of the small apartment, finding both the bathroom and kitchen empty. Just as he turned back to the living room, a shadow emerged from a closet on Beckett's left.

"Beckett! Left!" he shouted, opening fire at the figure in the same moment.

The man was fast though. He dove, dodging Esposito's shot and Beckett's swinging arm as she turned his way, and planted a solid punch in her left side, right on her scar. She gasped and faltered for a moment, which he used to swipe her legs out from under her and knock the gun from her hands.

Esposito's second round grazed the man's shoulder, distracting him just enough to let up on Beckett. Instead he swiped something from the desk that stood under the broken window and, dodging the third shot, tossed it in Esposito's direction. The detective ducked out of the way just in time. The sound of metal penetrating wood told him that he wouldn't have wanted to be in the way of whatever the guy had just thrown at him.

The clatter of metal brought his focus back to the window and he realized that the shadow had just climbed out of the window and onto the fire escape. It took him just a second to reach Beckett, and he was relieved to see that she was gulping in air with deep breaths. She looked like she was in pain, but not injured.

Feet on metal rungs pulled him to the window and he swung himself onto the desk, carefully looking out. He was surprised to see nobody climbing down, and as the footsteps continued, he realized that the guy was climbing upward.

"Beckett!" he hissed, "He's going for the roof."

She moaned slightly as she rolled on her knees and groped for her gun. "Go after him," she managed after a moment of still labored breathing, "I'll cut him off from the other side."

He nodded and proceeded to exit through the window. As he set foot on the metal grid he spared a look down and just saw Ryan peering around the corner. Abandoning all thoughts of stealth he put two fingers of his left hand in his mouth and produced a loud whistle, attracting his partner's attention. Lit up by the street light he could see the frown on Ryan's face as he bent around the corner, squinting up at Esposito until he recognized his partner and his expression changed to alarm.

Esposito waved toward the other side of the building before he turned and started to climb the ladder, aware that there were no more footsteps above him. He almost flew up the ladder, reaching the roof in what felt like seconds to him. Carefully he stepped onto it, moving slowly, trying to make out something, anything in the dark of the night, enhanced only by the little ambient light that came from a few lit windows in the surrounding buildings and the street lamps below.

When he realized that his sight wouldn't be of much use, given many shadows cast by the various sources of light all around, he switched to hearing. Moving as silently as he could, he strained his ears, trying to catch anything, a footstep on the concrete roof, a heavy, not quite stifled breath…

…

Her ears confirmed that Esposito was scrambling out of the window. She knew that she didn't have much time to cross the floor, get out of the window on the other side and climb up the fire escape there to try and cut off the man's remaining route of escape, but damn did that hurt. Not just crashing with her full weight–which wasn't actually that much, but still enough–on her back and having her breath forced out of her lungs, which seemed very reluctant to let any air back in. No, the single, well-aimed punch delivered straight to her scar was what still kept her on her hands and knees.

She had thought she was ready. Ready to take on whoever was behind this and bring them to justice… But apparently she wasn't even capable of dealing with their pawn. _Maybe not quite a pawn_, she thought, wincing at the piercing pain in her side.

She heard a loud whistle from outside the window. _Must be Esposito_. Too slowly for her taste she pushed herself up, kneeling without the support of her hands at first, carefully stretching her torso, before she fully stood up. As she heard her fellow detective start to climb up the rungs she found the switch of the desk lamp and flipped it, bathing the room in a mellow light.

Spotting and retrieving her gun was a piece of cake now that her vision had some help, and she was out of the door in seconds, walking down the hall as quickly as she dared without pulling her scar too much. Three ladders up to the roof. _Those won't be easy,_ she thought, remembering how she hadn't been able to climb that one ladder during the sniper case.

Opening the window at the end of the corridor and climbing out onto the metal grid didn't even register in her mind. Only the cold night air hitting her lungs brought her consciousness back to the situation. She looked up to the roof but didn't see–or hear–anyone coming down the ladders.

She could just stay here. Castle and Ryan were on the street, and the whistle she'd heard would've been Esposito, signaling the pair to watch the other side or maybe the front door. The building didn't have a back door, as far as she knew, so the man was trapped on the roof. There might have been a door through which he could have reentered the house, but there still wouldn't be a way for him to get out without being seen–and, hopefully, caught.

But Esposito had been climbing up, would be on the roof by now. And after what had happened just a minute or so ago in the apartment, he would need all the help he could get to take the guy down. He had moved like a shadow in the darkness, but hit with the force of a freight train. And apparently he didn't care about inflicting collateral damage, seeing as he'd fired a shotgun inside an apartment building through a closed door, not caring who was on the other side.

She pushed those thoughts back. Roof. Help Esposito. She gritted her teeth and started climbing.

…

He still didn't hear a thing. How could this guy be so damn quiet? And where the hell was he?

Esposito was crouching, still only a few meters away from the fire escape on his side of the building. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the lighting on the roof and he began to identify different shapes.

There was the large vent belonging to the central air conditioning system, though with the general state of the building he didn't expect it to work properly. Dotting the roof were about a dozen or so chimneys, each rising maybe a meter into the air, looking like solid concrete on the outside.

He squinted. Next to the AC vent there was a trap door, and it was open. He moved closer, taking cover behind one of the chimneys. Had the man gone back inside and was he riding the elevator down in this very moment, ready to walk out through the front door? Esposito couldn't very well imagine that happening, what with Ryan and Castle on the street, hopefully watching the main entrance too…

He spun around at a rushing noise coming from behind him. It took a moment before he managed to place it as a car passing by on the street below. He relaxed, just a little.

And was back on full alert in the blink of an eye. He'd heard something. Something that was definitely not a car. Something that was on this roof, with him. A grating sound, like someone pulling something across the concrete, but what…

He rose a little from behind his cover, peering across the roof to the trap door. Nothing. He couldn't make out where exactly the sound was coming from, but it wasn't too close. And not regularly either. It was there for a few seconds, and then it paused. And was there again.

Deciding that it must have been somewhere near the center of the roof, around the trap door, he left his cover and moved forward, carefully approaching the vent from the site opposite the trap door.

After having circled the vent without finding anything, he closed in on the trap door, making sure to keep his back to the vent. When he stopped to listen for a few more seconds he noticed that the sound had gone completely. He waited for almost half a minute but it didn't return, and the pauses had never been that long before.

He weighed the risks of using his flashlight to look down the trap door. Without it he wouldn't be able to see a thing, but if he used it and the man was still on the roof, he would know exactly where he was. But then, the man had escaped from his apartment apparently unarmed, and Esposito would surely be able to hear him if he came running at him. Not even that shadow could run without making any sound, right?

While he fished for his flashlight, Esposito heard the sound of footsteps on metal again, but this time from the other side of the building. _Must be Beckett_, he thought.

Having found the flashlight, he held it next to the barrel of his gun, pointing the combination down into the trap door before switching the light on. He didn't see anything at first, so he leaned forward, putting his weight on one knee for a solid footing as he peered in closer.

Suddenly his left thigh, which was supporting most of his weight, flared up with intense pain, subsequently folding in under him when he failed to rebalance quickly enough. When the leg was buried underneath him the pain became even worse and he realized that a knife or something similar must have been stuck there.

He braced himself on his hands before he went completely down, and managed to get his back up against the vent, his left leg half folded on the ground, stabilizing his weight with his right leg.

Quickly rearranging his gun and flashlight, he pointed both in the direction that the knife would've had to have come from. Almost straight to the left of his position was one of the chimneys, but there was no movement around it. So where was the guy?

A hit to the right side of his head sent him tumbling away from the vent. While he was still trying to get his bearings, the man was already on him, wrenching the gun from his hand and keeping him on the floor with a boot placed firmly on his chest. He had lost the flashlight during the fall, and with his left leg barely usable and his head pounding he was fairly defenseless as the shadowy figure pointed his own service weapon at him.

"Any last words, detective?" asked the man, his voice deep and a little gravelly. Those were the first words Esposito had heard out of his mouth, and it looked like they would be the last ones too.

He briefly thought about trying to dislodge the foot from his chest, but the way the man acted suggested that he would never present himself this vulnerable. No, his whole pose said that he was in control.

"No?" he asked as Esposito stayed silent. "Well, I suppose there really is nothing left to–"

He was cut off by the sound of a gunshot, followed by a growl of pain from his own throat. A second shot followed only fractions of a second later and the knee of the leg that was holding Esposito down gave in.

Esposito reacted immediately, making use of the man's momentary confusion as he dealt a blow to the already injured knee, allowing him to rise a little from the ground, while his shift and the knee injury threw the man's balance, resulting in him stumbling backwards before dropping down. Even though he rested his weight on his injured knee he was still capable of maintaining that position long enough to raise a slightly shaking hand and point the gun at Esposito.

The third shot tore through his forearm, forcing him to drop the gun as he clutched at the wound with his free hand.

Suddenly a flashlight was lit up, its cone of light being pointed right at the man, who Esposito recognized after a moment as the man from the mug shot. _Anthony Preston_.

He heard footsteps approaching fast as he carefully sat up, and soon Beckett entered his field of vision. She passed the still kneeling Preston at a safe distance, swiftly kicking the gun out of his reach before retrieving it. She then rushed over to Esposito, putting his gun down next him.

"I'm fine," he said before she even opened her mouth.

She nodded in response and pressed the flashlight into his hand before she moved away a few meters, retrieving his light and switching it on. They both pointed the lights at the man who was kneeling on the roof a few meters across from them, bleeding out of three wounds.

Her voice dripping with restrained fury, Beckett said, "Anthony Preston, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, and I wouldn't mind you using it right now, you son of a bitch."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: The roof scene might have been _slightly_ inspired by "Always". Emphasis on slightly, as in "it takes place on a roof". As you hopefully noticed, it takes a different turn :p.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I stayed under a month for this one :D.**_  
><em>

**A/N: How can it always be so ridiculously hard to find the beginning for a chapter?  
><strong>

* * *

><p><em>So take the photographs and still-frames in your mind<em>

_Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time_

He still heard the gunshots ringing in his head as he locked up her car in the hospital's parking lot. He'd known it. He'd known that this guy wasn't one to come quietly, and he'd had a feeling that things would take a nasty turn. He _had_ told them to take their vests. Not that they would've helped, but he would've felt a little better knowing they had at least rudimentary protection.

'Follow the ambulance,' she'd said. She'd come through the door behind the second gurney, tossing her keys to him before climbing into the ambulance.

She met him at the entrance to the emergency room, accepted the keys without a word and turned, heading past the reception desk. Nobody questioned them as they weaved through people rushing across the corridor, carrying this instrument and that supply.

Passing one of the rooms, he caught a glimpse of Esposito half lying on a bed, gritting his teeth as a nurse stitched up his leg.

Castle remembered the Latino cop's curses when he'd been wheeled into the first ambulance. His pants had looked distinctly dark.

Beckett stopped two rooms down from Esposito's and gestured for him to take a look.

At first he only saw lots of sterile baby blue, the way the shapes were buzzing around the center of the room reminding him vaguely of the inside of a colored beehive. Then he started to recognize the different people, doctors, nurses, interns. Their formerly sterile surgery gowns and gloves were sprayed and coated in blood.

"How many times did you shoot him?" he asked.

"Three."

He swallowed. Three bullets weren't to be taken lightly, not even for a trained killer. Hell, _one_ was enough to kill, provided it hit the right place. Even if the shots all hit non-vital areas, there was only so much blood a person could lose.

"Is Ryan in there?"

"No."

He gave her a look.

"Preston's sedated. Heavily, they assured me. And restrained by two sets of handcuffs."

He nodded. "So where's Ryan?"

"Talked to Gates," came the Irish detective's voice from behind him. Two uniforms flanked him.

"Let's go," said Beckett, nodding toward Esposito's room.

The uniforms took up station outside of Preston's room as the Castle and the two cops left.

They met the nurse at the door, which Ryan hurried to hold for her and then Beckett and Castle. After a long glance down the corridor he followed inside and closed the door.

The dark stain on Esposito's pant leg looked almost more sickening with the stark contrast to the white bandage that peeked through the tear.

"Whoa, man–" Castle began.

"I'll live," Esposito said, cutting him off. "Just a flesh wound."

Castle avoided the man's glare.

"What'd Gates say?" asked Beckett.

"She certainly wasn't pleased to be called at this hour," replied Ryan. "But news of a break in the 'John Doe' case caught her interest."

"What did you call Gates for?" asked Esposito.

"I told him to," said Beckett. "We can't very well keep him from her, with the shooting and your injury. Besides, there's a legit reason that we went to his place, and if we're lucky he doesn't know about Montgomery. Or doesn't think that knowledge would help him to get out."

"If." Esposito sounded skeptical.

"What should we have done instead?" Her voice was even. Forcibly even.

He huffed, but didn't give an answer. She raised her eyebrows at him before returning her attention to Ryan.

"Any orders?"

"Put up guards, interrogate him as soon as possible." To Esposito he added, "And to stay put until the doctor says you've recovered enough."

The man snorted in response.

"She's right," said Beckett. "We've got Preston now, and he's not going anywhere fast."

"So what do we tell Gates now?" asked Castle.

"I already told her that we IDed the victim on the subway footage, then saw a man who followed him," said Ryan. "We IDed the follower as Preston, got his address from DMV and went to take him in for questioning."

"And she didn't ask why that had to happen in the middle of the night?" asked Beckett.

"Actually, she did. She wants a full report first thing in the morning."

Beckett sighed. "Well, I guess in that case we'd better try to get some sleep. Come on, Castle, I'll drive you home."

She walked to the bed and laid her hand on Esposito's shoulder.

"Rest, Javier, and get better." A ghost of a grin appeared on her face. "You're no use to us like this."

He huffed, but still cracked a small smile himself. "Okay, Boss."

"You should go home, too, Kevin," she said.

The Irishman nodded. "I'll stay for a moment, though."

Walking beside Beckett through the hallway, Castle pulled out his phone. He cringed at the number of missed calls and unread texts the device presented him with.

There were, in total, five missed calls and about a dozen texts – all from Alexis.

_Dad, how are you? – Do you know when you'll be home? – Are you alright, Dad? – DAD?_

Unaware that they were still inside the hospital, his thumb flew to the little icon showing his daughter's smiling face.

"DAD!" The shriek that greeted him after only half a ring almost made him want to put the phone a foot away from his ear. His parental instincts didn't care much about his hearing, though.

"Hey, pumpkin," he said. Then she claimed the line again.

"Dad, where are you? Are you okay? It's late, and you didn't answer your phone, and I got worried… And Detective Beckett didn't pick up either–"

"I'm fine, Alexis," he cut in. "And Beckett's fine, too. I'll be home in–" He glanced at Beckett, who mouthed "fifteen" to him. "–fifteen minutes."

They passed through the waiting area, heading straight for the exit. The receptionist shot Castle a deadly look that he was totally oblivious to.

"I love you," he said. "See you in fifteen."

"Yeah," she replied, sounding a lot calmer now. "Love you too, Dad."

He hung up and pocketed his phone as they reached the car.

"I'm glad she didn't call the precinct," Beckett said as they settled in.

"How much did you hear?" he asked. With how loud his daughter had been at first, he wouldn't be surprised if Beckett had heard almost everything.

"Enough," she replied. "Three calls."

"Sorry. I just–"

"No, it's alright. The situation was… stressful enough to neglect your phone." She smiled a little. "I did the same."

The drive to his loft was quiet. Due to the late hour, Beckett pulled up in front of his building only ten minutes after the departure from the hospital parking lot. Castle unbuckled his seat belt, but then stayed in his seat.

After a minute, she prompted him. "What's wrong?"

He let out a breath and wiped a hand over his face. "I–I'm not sure. I guess it's the adrenaline… Finally wearing off."

In part that was true. He did feel a little jittery, just like about every other dangerous situation they'd been in. Even though he hadn't really been _in_ it this time. But there was something else that kept him in his seat. A kind of deep-rooted anxiety, whose cause he couldn't precisely pinpoint.

"It's more than that, isn't it?" she asked when he still didn't move.

He groaned. "Maybe."

Another minute of silence passed.

"You should go up, or else Alexis is going to have another fit."

He nodded, turning slightly toward the door. Then he turned back.

"Come up with me," he blurted out.

She looked at him quizzically.

"I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm kinda starving," he replied. "And I'm sure there's something in the fridge that I can turn into something edible… And we could, I don't know, relax, maybe watch a movie?"

Her gaze softened. "Castle…"

"Come on, Beckett. You and I both know that you would only be poring over the case and not getting a second of sleep if you went home now."

She looked down at the console.

"It's way past bedtime for Alexis, and Mother is really not my first choice to watch a movie with…"

She smiled at that and looked at him again.

"And there's popcorn," he said, waggling his brows.

Her smile turned into a smirk. "You know, you didn't have to play the popcorn card…" He gave her a confused look. "I was gonna say 'yes' before you said that."

His face lit up at that. "Awesome. Let's go."

"So easy," she muttered under her breath. Her words were swallowed by the sound of him opening his door while she unbuckled her own seat belt.

A few minutes later he unlocked the front door to his apartment and was greeted by a tangle of red hair, whose owner wrapped herself as tightly around him as she could.

"Oof!" he exclaimed, his voice laced with mock indignation. "Hey pumpkin."

"I was so worried, Dad! Why didn't you answer your phone?"

Castle shot Beckett a glance, who was just taking off her coat. She answered his unspoken question with a shrug.

So it was up to him how much he wanted to let his family know.

"We caught a break," he said to his daughter, "but then things turned pretty hectic and we had to act quickly..."

"Oh," was her only answer.

She kept hugging him for another minute, before he cleared his throat.

"I love you, kiddo, but I'd like to get out of my coat and shoes now... It's kinda warm in here, you know?"

She disentangled herself from him, a small, embarrassed smile on her face.

"Of course." She stared at him for a long moment, and he didn't dare to move. "I'm glad you're alright," she added.

Castle removed his coat and toed off his shoes in a manner that earned him amused looks from both women.

"I'll take your coat, Kate," he said, reaching past Alexis.

When the teenager realized his words, she jumped and turned around.

"God, Detective Beckett, I- I didn't see... I'm sorry I didn't notice you." Her face grew beet red as she rambled. "I mean-God... I'm glad you're alright, too. Just-what are you doing here?" After only a second's pause she added, "No offense, er, I mean..." Her face grew just a shade redder.

"Ca–your dad invited me," Beckett replied. "He said something about food, popcorn and a movie," she added with a hint of a smile.

"Ah… I see." Alexis still seemed a little unsure. "Uhm… What kind of food?" she asked, turning to her dad.

"I don't know," he replied offhandedly. "Whatever there is in the fridge."

"Uh, Dad, we haven't been grocery shopping in about a week."

"Really?" He thought for a moment. "Well, we should have bread and cheese, so if all else fails we can have grilled cheese."

He slung an arm around his daughter's shoulder as they wandered toward the kitchen.

"Where's Jake?" he asked, suddenly realizing that the man hadn't greeted him at the door.

"Miss me?" came Mansfield's voice from the dimly lit living room.

Castle only saw him when he rose from the spot where sat cross-legged. With his dark clothes he somehow blended very well into the shadows. It was a little uncanny how such a big man could practically be invisible.

"Just wondering if you're doing your job," Castle joked.

His venture into the fridge ended up being as (un)successful as Alexis had predicted.

"Okay," he said, "who's in for grilled cheese?"

Alexis and Mansfield declined, the former bidding the adults a good night before she climbed the stairs. Castle was relieved to see his daughter smile a real, relaxed smile after she gave him a peck on the cheek. He hoped that he wouldn't need to worry her like this again. At least not for a few days.

Martha came down at the same time, passing Alexis. She looked perfectly normal and at ease as she sauntered down the stairs, but the overly happy smile and tight hug she gave Beckett, who looked at least mildly surprised, and the way she looked into Castle's eyes and patted his hand belied her appearance. He knew that she had been worrying just as much as Alexis.

She turned straight around after greeting the two of them, claiming that she had only been waiting up for them.

While Castle busied himself with the sandwiches, Mansfield turned to Beckett.

"Been successful?"

"Somewhat," she replied hesitantly. "Sorry, can't talk about ongoing investigations."

"I understand."

For a minute the only sound in the room was the sizzling of heated fat.

"You want chillies on your sandwiches?" Castle asked.

"Sure," she replied.

He plucked a few from a glass he'd taken out of the fridge and spread them over the waiting slices of bread. Then he pushed the glass across the counter.

"Jake?"

The man grinned. "You remember."

"Of course I remember," Castle returned, now slicing cheese.

Mansfield reached into the glass and transferred two chillies into his mouth. He grimaced a little as he chewed, but still grinned after he swallowed.

"Nothing better than raw chillies," he said. "Though I still prefer fresh over pickled."

"Used to unnerve me," Castle said to Beckett, "when he just ate one after the other without breaking a sweat." He peered closer, then grinned. "Looks like those times are over."

Mansfield brushed a bead of sweat from his temple. "That's just the heat from your stove."

The two men chuckled, and Beckett soon joined in. Then Mansfield related his version of how he and Castle had met, with Castle throwing in mild protests from time to time, and before Beckett really noticed, Castle had placed a plate with three sandwiches in front of her.

Hungry as she was, she took a hearty bite from one and immediately started coughing.

"Careful, Kate," Castle said, "mind the chillies."

He got up and took three glasses out of a cupboard, filling them with water from the tap before he placed them on the counter.

"Here, have a drink."

She gratefully accepted the offered glass and drained half of it in one swig.

"You could've warned me," she said, mock offense swinging with the words.

"Sorry," he said easily. "But, you see, if you fail to pay attention to that, you really need a break."

She rolled her eyes at him.

They finished their sandwiches with less coughing, but another refill of water. While he was still munching on his last bite, Castle pulled a bag of popcorn from another cupboard and put it in the microwave.

"You want to join us, Jake?" he asked.

"Nah, I think I'll turn in, too."

"Okay. You found everything?"

"Yup. Good night, Rick. Detective."

Beckett mumbled something like a "Good night," around a mouthful of sandwich as Mansfield went into the living room. She swallowed, then glanced at her watch.

"It's already midnight, Castle. Do you think a movie is such a good idea?"

"Tell me, could you sleep now?" he asked in return.

She made a face. "No, probably not."

"See? And in case you suddenly get tired, you can stay the night."

She fixed him with a glare.

"In the guest room," he amended. "Upstairs."

"Doesn't your friend sleep there?"

"Nope. He asked to sleep on the couch in the living room, so that if someone were to break in, he'd be the first they run into. Means we'll have to settle into my office for the movie, by the way."

Her glare softened and she nodded before she popped the last bit of her sandwich into her mouth.

"Staying here might be better than driving home in the dead of night," she said after swallowing, watching his face light up a little.

The microwave pinged, and he busied himself with the popcorn, dumping the contents of the bag into a bowl and adding salt and butter flavor. Meanwhile, she collected the plates and put them into the sink, then refilled their glasses once more.

They quietly made their way through the living room and settled into the armchairs in his office. Castle insisted on pushing them together, and Beckett didn't object. Instead of turning on his smartboard, as she had expected, he set a projector up on the shelf behind them and hung a white canvas on the far wall. After a minute of fiddling, he handed her his laptop to pick a movie.

Feeling the need for something funny, she scrolled through his Netflix list until she came upon one that she wouldn't have expected to see.

"You told me you didn't know 'Forbidden Planet'," she said, a hint of amusement in her voice.

"What?"

"You remember, right? Last year, when you told me you'd never seen it before."

He just looked away, fighting an embarrassed grin.

"I should've known," she said, "there was no way you hadn't seen it."

"How do you know I haven't watched it after that?"

She smirked. "First, you wouldn't ask that if you really had. Second, it says here that you first watched it years ago."

He chuckled. "Guilty as charged."

"Then why did you tell me you didn't know it?"

He shrugged. "I… don't know. I just did, I guess. Kind of an impulse."

"You know that we'll have to watch it now, right? And you don't get to pretend you don't know all the right places to laugh at."

"No problem."

Still grinning, she passed the laptop back to him. He hooked it up to the projector and started the movie.

…

Waking at half past six the next morning, Beckett almost regretted letting Castle charm her into coming up and watching the movie with him. But she knew that he'd been right when he'd said that she wouldn't have gotten any sleep if she had gone home after dropping him off. This way she'd had at least four hours of sleep, and truth be told, she could run on less. That her caffeine intake increased exponentially with every missing hour of sleep was something she liked to ignore.

Wincing at her pre-coffee headache, she quickly changed out of the T-shirt and sweats that Castle had given her and back into her old clothes. She took a minute to make the bed and ball up the clothes, setting them on top of it, before she ventured downstairs.

She was surprised to be greeted by the aroma of fresh–and, more importantly, hot–coffee midway down the stairs.

"Hey, Castle," she greeted, sitting down on one of the stools at the island.

He swiveled around, a smile coming to his face. "Hey. Coffee?" His hands were reaching for a mug and the pot without waiting for her response.

"God, yes," she said, half groaning.

He passed her the full mug, and she downed the contents in one swig, not bothering to add anything. He refilled her cup, then poured one for himself before sitting down across from her. She waited for the caffeine to kick in before she spoke.

"How do you look so… awake? You can't have had more sleep than me."

"I."

She shot him a confused look.

"It's 'You can't have had more sleep than _I_,'" he clarified. "Although it has become widely common to substitute 'me' for 'I' in many cases, it's–" He interrupted himself when her confusion morphed into a death glare. "Sorry," he said. "Occupational hazard."

She shook her head. "Don't mess with my grammar before I've had my full dose of caffeine, Castle. And I'll have you know that it's three times as much as normal when I haven't had a good night's sleep." With that, she raised the mug to her lips and guzzled down her second coffee.

"I don't get how you can do that," he remarked, taking a sip of his own drink.

"What?"

"Down a cup of almost boiling coffee like it's no big deal. Doesn't it, I don't know, burn your throat?"

"Not as much as it used to," she replied, holding out her mug for another refill. "And besides, that's all part of the experience."

He poured the last coffee from the pot into her mug. "Do we need more?"

She gave him a 'duh' look, so he got up again, getting another pot started.

"Seriously, how long have you known me, Castle?" she asked, smiling as she attacked her third cup, albeit slower this time. "I can live off the stuff if I have to."

He snorted. "Yeah, I know. I'm kinda surprised that you don't have coffee running through your veins. The way you drink it… Like a vampire drinking blood." He paused, and she could see the gears turning in his head. "Ha!" he exclaimed with a grin. "I know, you're a coffee-vampire."

She didn't dignify his joke with a verbal response, although she couldn't quite control the smile that played over her lips.

Now that the caffeine started to work, she became gradually aware of the apartment around her. She turned around and noticed that the couch was vacant.

"Where's Mansfield?"

"Grocery shopping," Castle replied, "with Alexis."

"This early?"

"You wouldn't ask if you knew about the state of the fridge."

"And you're comfortable letting her go?" She didn't question Mansfield's capability to look out for the teenager, but she was more than a bit surprised that Castle hadn't just asked the man to go alone.

"Yeah," he said, "why not? We caught Preston, right?"

A sinking feeling settled into her guts. She wasn't really surprised that it was back, since she'd known that it would be, but she'd hoped to escape it a little longer.

When she'd sat in the back of the ambulance, carefully watching Preston as the paramedics had worked on the wounds she'd inflicted on him, her body and mind still high on adrenaline, she'd realized it. It had been like a kick to her guts, coming out of nowhere as she'd stared at one of his hands.

She hadn't told the others yet. She knew she should have, but somehow she hadn't.

Castle noticed the change in her expression, from the easy smile she'd worn only minutes before to positively depressed. He didn't like that in general, and even less now, when it was likely connected to this case.

"What's wrong?"

"It's…" She took a deep breath. "Preston's not my shooter, Castle. Tech pulled a print from the rifle, remember? Preston's prints are on file, so they would've matched if he'd been the shooter."

He absorbed the news silently. He'd been too optimistic, too blind to see what was actually right in front of him. He should've known. During the three months of her absence, he had memorized the whole case file, every detail there was. How could he have forgotten? How could he not have seen?

Now that she'd said it out loud, she actually felt a little better. Or maybe relieved was a better word. Because she didn't really feel better, destroying his little bit of good mood. But he needed to know, to help her figure out what was going on, and what to do. And to be able to look out for his family.

He worked his jaw for a moment before he replied. "I'm sorry, Kate. I should have seen that."

She'd expected some different reactions, but no apology. "It's not your fault, Castle. I didn't see it either, and I've memorized the whole file."

"Yes, so have I."

That statement somewhat threw her off. Sure, she knew that he'd worked to find a lead for months during the summer, and ever since the mysterious Mr Smith had called, he'd had it in the back of his mind. But she hadn't thought he'd go to the same extent that she did. Actually, being honest with herself, she had hoped that he wouldn't obsess over her case like she did with her mom's–which had become her own a while ago. Because she knew what that did to a person, had experienced it first hand.

She took a breath. "Let's not talk about who should've noticed, but didn't." She looked straight into his eyes. "Let's talk about what this means for the case."

He opened his mouth in the same moment that the front door opened. To his relief, Alexis and Mansfield walked in, laden with shopping bags.

"Hey Dad, we're back," Alexis called out.

"Hey, pumpkin," he returned, shooting Beckett a look that meant 'we'll talk later'.

Mansfield trodded past her, as she slipped out of her shoes, and dropped his bags onto the counter.

"Morning, Detective," he said to Beckett.

By the way his gaze lingered on her for a second longer than what could be deemed 'normal' and then flitted over to Castle, both of them knew that he'd caught onto the fact that something wasn't quite right. He didn't say anything though, just went back into the hall, presumably to get rid of his coat.

Then Alexis entered the kitchen, a smile and "Good morning" directed at Beckett on her lips. She placed her bags beside the others and started to put things away.

Castle was trapped in a dilemma. On the one hand, he didn't want Alexis to panic, didn't want to panic himself, really. And he didn't want her to know too much; then again, she'd seen Kate get shot, so what 'more' was there really that he could keep from her in an attempt to protect her psyche?

On the other hand, he actually wanted her to stay inside until they closed this case. Hopefully for good, too. He knew he couldn't make her do that just because he was having his 'protective dad jitters', though, so he would have to settle for asking her to be extra careful. But even for that she'd need a reason.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Beckett beat him to it.

"I should go home now," she said with a glance at her watch. "Get changed, and prepare my report for Gates."

"Right," he said automatically. "Give me a minute–"

She interrupted him. "Actually, I think it'll be best if I talk to her alone. Cop to cop, you know? If you're not there, she won't be able to take it out on you."

He nodded, though he didn't like it. Didn't want to let her go out there alone. But, he realized, it was her call, so he respected it. "'Kay. Give me a call when you're done?"

"Of course." She smiled at him. "We've still got some tough nuts to crack."

"Right on that."

He rose in time with her, following her into the hall. His hands fell to the lock and handle while she slipped into her boots and coat. He flipped the lock and held the door for her.

"Be careful," he said as she stepped out.

She turned and gave him a tight-lipped smile before she walked down the corridor and vanished into the elevator.

He closed the door with a sigh, mentally preparing himself for the conversation he was about to have, and the explanation he'd have to give his daughter.

…

A good two hours later, Beckett waited impatiently for Castle to step out of the elevator. She took another look at the file that was spread out on her desk, then glanced longingly at her empty NYPD mug. Of course she could just get up and make herself another cup, but it had been over twenty minutes since she'd ended her short phone call with Castle. She expected him to come in any minute, preferably with a large coffee for her in his hand. She didn't even care what kind it would be, though knowing him, she was pretty sure it would be her favorite. She could use that.

Gates hadn't taken the news too well, even though she'd known the critical elements already. Beckett had been forced to listen to a ten minute long rant about proper suspect take-down procedure and "how to have your partner's back so he won't be nearly killed".

To prevent her temper from getting the better of her, she'd tried to remember the lessons Royce had taught her about taking down suspects, and how he'd sometimes made fun of what the textbook said. She'd had to fight a smile when the memory of an incident involving the almost loss of her top had popped into her mind.

She wondered what Gates would think of that approach.

Beckett cast a look across the room. Ryan was on the phone with someone. A few uniforms were populating desks farther away, filling out paperwork and drinking coffee.

Suddenly a large paper cup appeared under her nose, and the heavenly smell of vanilla-scented coffee invaded her nostrils. She was smiling already as her eyes traveled up the arm that was connected to the hand holding the cup to finally meat her partner's gaze.

"Hey, Castle," she said. "Thanks."

"Thought you could use a little pick-me-up after dancing with the devil," he replied, sitting down in his chair. He let her have a good-sized drink of coffee before he asked, "So, what's the news?"

"CSU searched his apartment all night. They found a shotgun and several other weapons, including a rather impressive collection of knives."

"So looks like he really is a hitman."

"That, or he just has a thing for weapons. Anyway, they also found a laptop, but it's heavily encrypted, so there's no telling when, or even if, we'll get to see what's on it."

"Crap. What about a phone?"

"Nothing. He could have lost it in the fight on the roof, but they checked that, too, and didn't find anything significant."

"A professional killer without a phone? Sounds impossible to me."

"That's what I thought. If anything, he'd have a burner phone. Ryan already checked, there is no phone registered to his name. Nor does he have a credit card, by the way."

"What? No… How does this guy live?"

"Cash, obviously. I assume that he gets paid in cash or by check, given that we didn't find any record of a bank account either."

"Fake identity? The more we know about this guy, the more it looks like he isn't–"

"Nope. Of course I checked that. He's on file, and his background checks. Anthony Preston is definitely a real person, and he's the guy I put three rounds in last night. The only thing I could think of would be an account under another name, but somehow I don't believe that. In any case, we asked all banks in the tri-state area to check if they have a customer that fits his description, though we shouldn't expect anything to come from that."

"True. What bank keeps pictures of their customers on file?"

"None, because that would mean extra paperwork."

"Okay… So with the laptop practically useless, do we even have anything? What about prints?"

"None in his apartment, aside from his, Espo's and mine. And while the place is neat, it isn't extremely clean, so I don't think he wipes everything down after he has a visitor."

"Neighbors?"

"Uniforms talked to them today. All of them are singles, live alone and are hardly home at all, so they didn't know anything. Most of them couldn't even connect his name and face."

"So basically, we've got nothing. Except him."

"Yep. I talked to the doctors, they say we might be able to talk to him later today. If we're lucky."

"If? He's not going to die, is he?"

"No, they say that he's quite stable. They're just not sure if he's strong enough to stay awake long enough for us to gain anything from asking questions."

With the briefing finished, they fell silent while Castle processed the new information. The facts were really not helpful at all, rather discouraging, actually. That a suspected professional killer was supposed to be able to live–and work–without a bank account or a phone confused him. True, the man had a laptop… But he must own a phone, too, he thought.

"So… do you believe he doesn't have a phone?" Castle asked.

"The evidence says there isn't one…" she replied, "but my gut tells me otherwise."

"Yeah, mine too…" he paused, then shot her a mischievous look. "CSU is done with his place, right?"

She smirked back, hand reaching blindly for her phone.

"Come on, Castle. Road trip."

…

They went through Preston's apartment with a fine-toothed comb. Twice. Checked the walls for hidden compartments and the seams on the mattress. Pulled all the books from the single shelf in his living room, dug around his drawers and kitchen cupboards. Not even the toilet's water tank held anything except, well, water.

Apart from the nick in the wall next to the kitchen, the bullet holes in the closet door and desk drawer and the broken-out window, the apartment could have belonged to any hard-working, law-abiding New York citizen.

Just not a professional killer.

They went up to the roof next, quickly discovering that the chimneys all had metal grids worked into them, most likely to prevent things from falling in. After one pass across the whole roof space, they ended up at the trapdoor that had become a trap for Esposito the night before, in a very literal sense. The room underneath was small, and the single door that led out and back into the building was locked. With nothing else in the room, there was nowhere to hide anything.

Frustrated, Beckett leaned against the vent next to the trapdoor.

"This doesn't make sense," she complained, hands resting on her hips. "How would this guy be able to operate without a phone?"

Castle came over and leaned against the vent next to her.

"Well, he could have lost it… Or someone stole it," he said.

"Not helping, Castle. We have to assume that he had one last night."

After a minute of silence, she changed her approach.

"Okay. Derrick Storm is on a secret mission, acting as a normal citizen in a small apartment. His laptop's encrypted with the best that the CIA has to offer, so he's not worried about that falling into the wrong hands. But he has this burner phone that he needs to get in touch with his contact. He knows someone's after him, to find out who's leaking information to outsiders, and those people are standing on the other side of his door.

"He decides to escape to the roof, taking the phone with him. But the people follow him, and he knows he won't get past them. So he decides to try to take them on in a fight, but he can't do that with the phone on him, because if he loses, they get it and his contact. So he has to hide it. He's on the roof and he has to hide it. The chimneys aren't an option, and he knows that the little room under the trapdoor isn't either."

Castle picked up her thought.

"No, he's lived in this building for a bit, and the first thing he did after he got the phone was think of places to hide it–places nobody would ever think to look. That's why he's not even trying to hide it in the apartment, because that's where everybody would look. The chimneys are just as obvious; he knows, he's been in the business long enough to know _all_ the obvious, and many of the not so obvious hiding places. He wouldn't have come to the roof if he didn't have a plan, a place to hide the phone…"

Castle trailed off, mentally crossing out ideas as he zeroed in on one. He pushed off of the vent and walked to the edge of the roof. Beckett followed suit.

"You have an idea?" she asked.

"Just…" he replied, carefully leaning forward to look down over the edge. "Ha!"

"What?" she asked, leaning forward too, a hand on his upper arm.

If that was meant to steady him or her was unclear to both of them.

He pointed down. Following his outstretched arm, she saw the dumpsters huddled against the side of the building; the _open_ dumpsters, to be precise. From their position on the roof they were just able to see the light blue of plastic trash bags stopping the dumpsters open and spilling out onto the ground.

"You think he dropped it down there?" she asked, though the idea began to make more and more sense to her.

"Yep," he replied. "That's got to be the only place you could hide something like a phone when you're up here and in a hurry. That is, if you want to be relatively certain that it's in a place nobody's going to even think of."

"Well, you did."

He leaned back, retreating a step from the edge, drawing her along. "Let's go and check."

…

An hour and a half later, a rather smelly and grime-covered pair of detective and writer left the elevator on the homicide floor. Ryan went to meet them in the middle of the bull pen when he noticed their arrival, but recoiled a few feet away from them.

"Ewww… Where have you _been_?"

The two partners stopped, shared a look, and fought a silent war against the laughter that was trying to erupt from their throats. Finally Beckett reached into her pocket and pulled out a plastic evidence bag containing a small, simple mobile phone. She handed the bag to Ryan, who accepted it apprehensively, carefully holding it between his thumb and finger.

"See if tech can pull some information from that," she said.

"Is that… his phone?" the detective asked.

"Better be," Castle replied. "I wouldn't like to think that we crawled around in dumpsters for nothing."

Ryan gave the two of them another quick once-over before he scurried away.

Beckett smirked, then sniffed at the sullied arm of her jacket. She rolled her eyes.

"Well, he's right about one thing: we smell."

"True," Castle said. "A shower and fresh clothes wouldn't be bad right now…" He took a step back and looked her over, his gaze turning into a playful leer. "Although this kinda takes 'talking dirty' to a whole new level."

She raised a brow at him. "Seriously?"

Their eyes locked, and both leer and frown softened. Finally, after a few eternal minutes (or maybe just one, neither of them was sure), Castle broke the silence.

"Well, I need to go home, then," he said, starting to walk back to the elevator. "You coming?"

"No," she replied, "I should stay here in case the tech guys are quick. I keep spare clothes in my locker, and the gym has a shower."

"'Kay. Give me a call if anything comes up?"

"Sure." She walked toward the stairs. "Castle?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful."

* * *

><p><strong>Uh… Reviews are awesome ;D. Just saying…<strong>


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: I seem to be on a roll–that, or I've been extremely lazy before. Aaaanyway, hope you enjoy.**

**As a little reminder where we are (since that was requested the after the last chapter), Beckett and Castle have just returned with what they suspect to be Preston's phone. After handing it to Ryan, Castle's gone home to shower and change, while Beckett heads upstairs to the precinct's gym.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><em>Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial<em>

His_ phone? How could they have found his phone?_ There was no doubt in the man's mind that the detectives were talking about Preston. He fumed inwardly. _Time and again I've told him to get rid of it, should he be cornered. But does he listen? Probably thought he could fight his way out._

He watched the detectives and the writer from across the floor, leaning against the wall next to the break room. His relaxed stance and the police uniform he wore, with the cap pulled down to shade his eyes, made him look like he belonged there, among the other cops. None of them had a clue of what was really going on, except the people he was focusing his attention on. And not even they _knew_ much, they just had the tiniest of ideas. But now, everything could change.

When his phone had rung the night before, shortly before midnight, he'd known that nothing good was going on. In the space of three, four sentences he'd learned all he needed to know about the situation.

_Get into the twelfth precinct in the morning, find out what exactly they know and make sure they don't find any connection,_ the voice on the other end of the line had told him.

He'd never met his employer, always received his orders by phone and his payments arrived via wired transfer to one of his accounts. It was better that way. The less he knew about his employer, the better.

He knew everything about Preston's connection with his employer. Naturally, since he'd been the one to suggest him for the job. He'd believed that Preston would be experienced enough for the job, but judging from what the detectives had found out, he had made a number of mistakes. Most of them were negligible for him and his employer, since they had only resulted in Preston's arrest. He wouldn't talk to the cops, he knew what would happen to him. But the last, and from his point of view the largest, mistake threatened to expose his employer. And him right along.

For someone else, it might have been strange to stand across the room from the person he'd been ordered to shoot only half a year before. Of course, had his employer really wanted her dead, she wouldn't be standing there, now. She'd be lying six feet under cold ground. It seemed that that decision had been a little off, too. Not that he really cared. If he wanted, he could retire at any moment and spend the rest of his life on a sunny little Caribbean island. Or wherever he wanted. His employer was a generous man after all. But he liked his job, liked the rush of adrenaline right before a kill, the feeling of power when his target lay dead on the ground. He wouldn't ever give that up.

Free of emotion he watched as first Ryan disappeared into the elevator, going to get the phone hacked, and then Castle leaving too. Going home to get cleaned up, as the writer said. Beckett lingered for a moment after the elevator doors closed. It would have been so easy to just walk up to her, snap her neck and be done with it. But he knew that he'd never make it out of the precinct alive. He was good, just not _that_ good. And she wasn't any longer the only driving force, he reminded himself. Even if she died, the writer would be determined to go on. As would the two detectives. And their determination might just be enough to make the difference. Plus, there still was the old man who was blackmailing his employer to leave Beckett alone. It irritated him that to date he still hadn't found out anything about his identity.

_One thing at a time_. He decided to wait until Ryan returned and then to go down to the tech lab and extract the phone.

Beckett finally took the stairs to the gym on the floor above. After ten minutes without a sign of Ryan returning, he decided to go down and see what was going on. He knew it was prudent to avoid killing anyone inside a police precinct. At least if he planned to leave the building alive. But if he had to knock out a few technicians and a detective, well, so be it.

…

Ryan had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach from the moment he received the evidence bag from Beckett. He wasn't really sure what caused it, but he felt _watched_, in some sort of way. Which was ridiculous. He was in the middle of the Twelfth, surrounded by cops. The only one who could actually be watching them was Gates, but he tried to convince himself that that was just his paranoia talking. She didn't _know_ anything was amiss. He just had to keep his cool, and they would get the whole thing wrapped up without her learning anything about Montgomery.

Walking through the door to the main tech lab, he quickly spotted his "favorite" technician, a man of medium height with graying hair and a slight paunch.

"Hey, Dave," he called.

"Ryan," the man returned with a sigh, turning around to the detective. "I told you I would call if we have news about the laptop."

"Forget the laptop," Ryan replied. "I'm here for this." He dangled the evidence bag in front of Dave's eyes.

Dave took the bag from his hands and examined the phone through the plastic.

"Looks like your average burner phone, if I'm not mistaken."

"Guess so," Ryan replied.

"And it's switched off," Dave observed.

"A hundred dollars for the man who can guess what I want," Ryan joked.

"You want it turned on, I'd say. And the PIN cracked."

"Smart guy. How long?"

"Unless someone tampered with it, like with the laptop, I should have it unlocked in ten minutes. I'll call you when I'm done."

"Nah, I'll wait," Ryan replied.

"Fine. As long as you don't breathe down my neck."

Twelve minutes later, the technician called him over to his workstation and handed him the phone back, contained in a fresh plastic bag.

"Completely at your disposal," he said.

Ryan thanked him and turned to leave, but Dave caught his arm.

"Wait. I've printed out the address book," he said, handing Ryan a sheet of paper. "Isn't much in it, and there are no recent calls."

"Thanks, Dave," Ryan replied, folding and stuffing the paper in his pocket while he hurried out.

…

He was impatient. _Why did I have to take the elevator?_ he asked himself for the third time as it stopped on the third floor in a row. He probably would've been faster if he'd taken the stairs. To his chagrin, by the time he approached the floor on which the tech lab was situated, there was still another uniformed policeman in the car with him. He'd hoped to make it there unnoticed. This way, he might need to take a detour down another corridor, at least until the elevator was gone, carrying the cop to the underground parking garage.

He forced himself to remain calm as the bell chimed, announcing the arrival on his destination floor. He wasn't the rushing sort of person, rather the opposite, actually. Calm, controlled and calculating. Those guidelines had served him well over the years that he'd done this job, and before.

The doors opened, and he found himself face to face with the detective he'd been looking for. He froze, quickly running through his options. There weren't many.

One, he could step out, try to distract him with a question until the car was gone, and then take him out with a surprise attack. Although that could work, it depended on Ryan letting himself be distracted. The look on the detective's face spoke of hurry, so he didn't think that this approach had high chances of success.

Two, he could stay in the elevator, ride down the two floors, hope that nobody else enter and then take Ryan. Again, that plan was contingent on an uncontrollable outside factor. As was getting out, waiting for the car to come back up and then getting in.

"Excuse me?" Ryan's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Are you getting out?"

"You going down, Detective?" asked the uniform behind him.

"Up."

"Might want to take the stairs, then. "

"Damn," the detective muttered, then turned and headed for the stairs.

He snapped out of his daze and got out of the elevator, taking a turn to the other side, mentally cursing himself for not acting quicker.

_There was a witness_, he told himself. _If you're going to attack a cop inside a hole full of cops, do it with the least amount of witnesses around. Especially armed witnesses._

He moved slowly, waiting until he heard the elevator doors shut with a creaking noise, before he spun around and swiftly marched back to the stairs.

_He wouldn't have waited ten minutes down here if he didn't have the phone now,_ he thought. _Which means they've cracked the PIN and now have the number. I bet that the guys in tech have made a copy of the data… Gotta pay them a visit. But first things first._

He jogged up the stairs, his hands subconsciously checking the gun on his hip and the knife that was hidden up his sleeve.

…

"And you're sure? … Yes. … Thank you."

Smith hung up and let out a curse. How was he supposed to keep Beckett alive if she did everything she could to escalate the situation? And why wasn't Castle doing his part in keeping her away from the case? He had to know that this was it. Smith knew the man had been asking questions, working the case on his own after the police had abandoned it. He had let him, since protecting him wasn't part of the deal. Of course, had anything happened to Castle because of this, Beckett would've been at it again head over heels. But that was a gamble he'd had to make, because although Smith was resourceful, even he had his limits.

Trusting Castle with this had, apparently, been a mistake. Now everything was on the verge of spiraling out of control, and fast. _Damn_.

If he was to even try to gain control of the situation again, he'd have to find out how much Beckett knew, how close she'd gotten to getting herself–and everyone around her–killed. The only information his source in the hospital had only been able to share was that she had brought a man named Anthony Preston in after a shooting, in the course of which not only Preston but also another police detective had been injured.

It hadn't been the arrested man's name that had rattled Smith, but rather his description. He vividly remembered seeing the man, and the context of it answered the question he'd been trying to answer for the last couple of days. Everything fit together now. Not that he had any real proof, but he was certain that he was right.

Saturday afternoon, Smith had been sitting in a crowded cafe in the middle of Manhattan, sipping his coffee while he'd waited. Over an hour after his arrival, the man he'd come to meet had showed up. Gray hair, suit, briefcase, and a face just the way Smith had imagined it would look like from the older photographs he'd seen.

It had taken Smith an inordinate amount of time and work, not to mention calling in old favors and promising new ones, to get a hold of this man. Small wonder, given that, to the public eye, he hadn't existed in over two decades. He had looked rather well for being the proverbial ghost, Smith had had to admit.

He had been reluctant to share information, at first. It had taken persuasion, assurances and a few choice pieces of evidence to loosen his tongue, but once Smith had succeeded in establishing a little rapport between them, Weston had spilled a lot. Smith was certain that it wasn't nearly all that the man he was after, the man Weston had worked for all the years that he'd been off grid now, had been involved in, but it was more than enough. Everything from political intrigue over extortion to weapons dealing was there, and yet he'd managed to steer clear of prosecution.

_Apply pressure to the right points, and offer a helping hand to others, and you're on your way to rule them all,_ Smith thought.

It had taken him half a year to get everything together, but on New Year's Eve Smith had been ready to fulfill a dead man's last wish, and to repay the debt he'd owed him for a long time. Winning Weston over had been the last key piece, enabling him to start planning the dragon's downfall.

He had told Richard Castle just as much as the man had needed to know. Yes, keeping Beckett alive had been part of Montgomery's last request to his old friend, but to Smith is wasn't so much keeping her alive as keeping her out of the whole affair. He'd never met her, and even though she'd apparently meant a lot to Montgomery, he wasn't too concerned about her life. Not because he was heartless, but because he knew what was at stake. Because he knew how many lives hinged on his success. Hers was just one among them, but it was the most volatile. The one most likely to cause trouble, and if there was one thing Smith had no use for, then it was trouble.

However, all his plans had come to nothing on New Year's Day. When Weston hadn't shown up for their meeting, Smith had grown anxious. After waiting in the park for two hours, he'd gone home and started to rearrange his plans. He might have overreacted then, but in hindsight, he had been right to assume the worst. He'd listened in on the police radio all night, and had received confirmation in the early hours of Monday morning.

Already at night he'd gone through his memory, trying to remember if he'd seen anything suspicious, anyone watching him and Weston at the cafe, or following either of them. And he had.

He'd recalled a white male, tall, with an army-style haircut entering the cafe about ten minutes after Weston had arrived. Smith had taken note of him because of the air that had surrounded him, exuding self-certainty to the point of condescension. He'd only had a cup of coffee while his eyes had been taking in the whole room, always in motion, never lingering, and yet Smith had the feeling that he'd been watching only Weston and him the whole time.

The man had left after he'd finished his coffee, but he'd been outside, across the street, when Weston had left. And if Smith wasn't mistaken–and he rarely was–then he had been following Weston.

Smith had no idea what Weston had wanted in the part of Manhattan where his body had been found, and so far he didn't even know if he'd been killed where he'd been found. That was something he needed to remedy. At least it was still early, barely past eight a.m.

…

Ryan was taking the stairs two at a time as he raced up to homicide. The single phone number in the burner phone's contact book could be _the_ breakthrough they had been waiting for. Not just since Monday, but rather all the time since the summer. Hell, if Beckett and Castle were correct, and this case _was_ tied to Beckett's mother's murder, then it could be the break she'd been waiting for ever since she became a cop.

His heart was hammering in his chest, and he knew that it wasn't just the exertion from running up several flights of stairs. One floor beneath homicide he paused, taking a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to look at least a little collected. To the world outside of their team, this was just another case. Nothing extraordinary, nothing to warrant such haste.

Heavy footsteps rang on the stairs underneath. Someone else was taking the stairs, probably after having waited too long for the elevator, he thought. Then he remembered the strange encounter with the uniform. The man had basically frozen in place when he'd acknowledged Ryan's presence, as if he recognized him, though Ryan couldn't say that he knew him. And he knew all the uniforms that worked in homicide by face and name. It was a matter of respect to know the names of the people who put their lives on the line next to his on a daily basis.

Dismissing the thought, he resumed his ascension, though more slowly now. By the time he reached the platform in the middle of the stairs, he heard the slightly labored breathing a little below him, but thought nothing of it.

He'd just taken two steps onto his floor and in the direction of the bull pen when he felt the muzzle of a gun being pressed into his lower back.

…

_Why does he have to hurry so much?_ the man cursed to himself as he jogged up the stairs. The little head start that Ryan had had on him was almost gone now, yet it seemed that it was just enough. Once the detective was on his floor, surrounded by his fellow cops, there would be little chance to retrieve–or destroy–the phone without drawing attention to himself. And as the stairs were passing by underneath his feet, it seemed that there was little he could do about it.

Turning on the platform in the middle between homicide and the floor below, he spotted Ryan three quarters up the last remaining flight of stairs. He knew then that the deal was sealed. It was highly unlikely that he would be able to get his hands on the phone and make it out of the building. Considering that, he could just have turned around and left, pulled the money from his accounts and set off to somewhere else. Somewhere his employer wouldn't easily find him, in case he got out of this mess in one piece.

There were just two things keeping him from pursuing that course of action. First, however important self-interest was in his profession, he did feel a sense of loyalty toward his employer. Or for the money that he paid, at least. It wasn't anything like a bad conscience, but it would always feel like a personal failure to him if he gave up and ran now. Second, he really did like a challenge, and this was by far the greatest that he'd encountered. Much greater than shooting a police officer at her late captain's funeral. From a distance, that is.

Then an idea occurred to him. A way he might get out in the end. Assuming that these cops were as reluctant to sacrifice one of their own as normal cops. He pulled the gun from his holster, flipped the safety and raced up the remaining steps, three at a time. He reached the floor just a step behind Ryan, and, catching up to him, pressed the muzzle of the gun to his lower back, directly over the right kidney.

"Not a word," he growled, keeping his voice low. "We're going for a ride, Detective."

Ryan froze. He couldn't see his attacker, and he didn't recognize the voice. Nobody had noticed their arrival on the floor yet, but it was only a matter of time. There was just too much business on this floor for everyone to sit still and stare at their paperwork. But what would the others do once they noticed? He was being held at gunpoint, so there wasn't really anything they could do without putting him in danger.

"Give me the phone," the man grumbled.

Ryan swallowed, trying to think of a way to stall. It was clear to him that if he left the floor without anyone noticing, he would be very lucky to survive. Someone who dared to point a gun at a cop inside of a police precinct was either mad, desperate or very sure of himself. His attacker's voice was calm and collected, and Ryan didn't hear any shuffling sounds coming from him, so he had to stand calmly, too. Nothing suggested that he was mad, and if he was desperate, then he did a very good job of concealing it.

Just as the man prodded him with the gun, Officer Hughes rounded the corner, carrying a stack of papers. He looked up at Ryan, nodded in greeting, and then dropped his load, his hands flying to his gun, when he noticed the little flash of light reflecting off of the gun at Ryan's back and the detective's awkward, slightly cramped stance.

Next thing Ryan knew, an arm was locked around his throat and the pressure of the muzzle was removed from his back. Then he heard the shot.

Before he could even begin to struggle, the gun was being pressed to his temple. He saw Hughes lying on the floor between the papers he'd been carrying, blood spreading out underneath him.

Then, within moments, the whole floor was up and about. The five remaining uniforms hurried to form a semicircle facing Ryan and his attacker, guns drawn, shouting at him to drop his gun. Somewhere in the back someone was busy on the phone, alerting the building and reporting the officer down. Gates, gun in hand, stepped out of her office and took up position behind the uniforms.

"Drop your weapon!" she thundered. "I said drop. Your. Weapon."

"Not happening, Lady," the man said. "Here's the deal. My buddy here and I are gonna leave this building, unchallenged, and nobody else'll get hurt. Clear?"

If anything, Gates' glare only became colder. "I don't think _you_ understand," she said calmly. "_You_ just gunned down one of _my_ officers. Hell'll freeze over before _I_ let _you_ walk out of this building with another one as your hostage."

"Except there's nothing you can do about it, can you now?" the man shot back, grinning smugly. "'Cause you're not going to risk letting me put a bullet in his head."

Gates' features tightened another notch, her eyes reduced to mere slits, but she had no immediate reply.

…

Smith closed the email that had cost him another favor. At least he now had photographs of Beckett's murder board, and he'd studied them. Judging the information he could glean from them, it looked like a real stroke of luck that the team had been able to identify and apprehend Preston. Too much so, in fact. Smith wondered how much Castle had actually been able to find out.

Still, the information on the board suggested that they had nothing on the dragon. Their only connection to him was Preston, and that was a fragile one. Smith was sure that Preston wouldn't talk, that he wouldn't rat out his employer. Why would he? Even professional killers have something resembling a code of honor, he thought.

Then again, it was better to be safe than sorry. Considering what he'd learned of the murder, and the arrest, Smith knew that Preston was one hot-headed and bad-tempered man. There are numerous ways to render a body unidentifiable, which was probably the reason for the violent way in which Weston had been killed, and the way that Preston had chosen revealed a lot about his personality.

Coming to a decision, he picked up his phone off of the table. The screen shortly flashed to life, the clock reading 12 p.m., before he switched it off. He would take no chances.

…

Beckett felt wonderfully clean and relaxed as she stepped out of the shower and dried off. Although she'd kept it short, of course, she wasn't above admitting that she'd needed the break. Only to herself, of course. And she hadn't desperately needed it. She dressed in her spare clothes and was just busy toweling her wet hair when she heard a loud noise from downstairs. It took her a moment to place it, and once she did, her eyes grew wide. Dropping the towel, she jumped to her locker, fumbling with the lock.

It took her entirely too long for her liking to turn it to the right combination. She threw the metal door open and grabbed her gun from the holster and hurried out of the room, not bothering to close her locker or put on her boots.

Upon reaching the top of the stairwell, Beckett slowed and dropped to a crouch. She slowly descended the steps, carefully pointing the gun, safety still engaged, straight ahead.

Adrenaline pounded through her veins as she stood on the platform halfway down the stairs, taking in the sight of the floor below. She saw five uniforms and Gates standing in a semicircle around a sixth uniformed man, pointing their guns at him, while he held his own gun as if he was pressing it to the head of a hostage, who would be hidden from her by the man's sheer size.

He was standing with his back to the stairs heading down, the staircase's metal rungs running between him and her. She quickly dismissed the thought of taking her shot at him. Yes, it was a distance of only a handful of feet, and yes, she was a good shot, but if anything went wrong, if she missed… She dared not continue the thought, afraid for whoever was the man's unfortunate hostage.

So, instead of taking the shot, she carefully ventured down another two steps, silently praying that her colleagues were mindful enough not to give her approach away. Thankfully they were all completely focused on the man and his hostage, so she stayed unnoticed. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself in the face of the risk she was about to take.

"Drop your gun, or I drop you!" she said, her voice threateningly hard and cold.

He flinched. _What the–_ Completely reflexively he spun around, his right arm straightening, pointing the gun at the source of the voice, crouching there behind the rungs on the other side of the stairwell.

In the blink of an eye he recognized her, and in the same moment he realized he'd made a mistake. While his reflexes had so often saved his life, now they were his doom. He couldn't even make his finger pull the trigger before the bullet broke through the side of his skull, penetrating deep into his brain, ending all of his thoughts.

His muscles slackened as he dropped dead to the floor.

Beckett did a double take as Ryan stumbled away from the fallen attacker, barely stifling a gasp as she realized her friend had been the man's hostage. They were professionals, had guns pointed at them before, but this, now, was different somehow. Ryan was supposed to get married in not even a week. She swallowed, pushing back the dread thoughts of what could've happened. _It's over. At least for now._

The uniforms dispersed, two of them checking that the man was really dead, the other three running off to the fallen Officer Hughes. Gates lowered her weapon, still glaring at the dead man. She exchanged a look with Ryan, and when he answered with a nod, saying that he was alright, she allowed herself a tight, and brief, smile. Then she turned her attention to the little crowd that had gathered around Hughes.

Beckett took the final steps down and squeezed Ryan's arm, smiling at him, beyond glad that he was okay. When he didn't look back at her, but instead stared to where the uniforms had just run, she followed his gaze and gasped as she saw the uniformed officer lying in a pool of blood.

Only moments later the elevator opened and paramedics spilled onto the floor, shoving the cops aside to tend to the fallen one.

Beckett's grip on Ryan's arm tightened as memories of a little more than half a year before flashed through her. The shock of the bullet entering her, the sudden, dull pain spreading from her chest over her whole body, flaring up with every fraction of a second that passed. Castle tackling her down. Castle holding her head. Castle–Castle saying that–that he loved her.

She noticed that she was shaking as the medics wheeled the gurney with the unconscious officer on it into the elevator.

_At least they're not carrying him out in a body bag_, she thought. "Who…?"

"Hughes," Ryan replied.

Beckett closed her eyes. _God_. Not him. He'd joined the squad in the fall, as fresh out of the academy as they come. He'd always been rather quiet, reserved, but still had had a smile for her every morning, be it in here or out at a crime scene.

Reason told her that she'd feel just the same if any of the other ones had been in his place. But she refused that logic. Of course they all knew what they'd signed up for the day they'd gotten their badges, but she couldn't shake the feeling that of all people on this floor, she was the one who really knew what this job could cost a person. Who knew first hand in how many ways it could kill you, metaphorically as well as literally. If Hughes survived this, then he'd know it, too. At least one of the literal ways.

Gates came up to Beckett and Ryan, her gun already handed off to one of the uniforms, who'd bagged it, ready for IA to take it with them. Their investigation would only be a formality, though, given the seven cops who had witnessed the scene. Still, regulations require an internal investigation after any shooting that involves a cop, and if anyone would insist on regulations being followed to the letter, it was Gates.

"What the _hell_ was all this about?" she asked.

Beckett and Ryan shared a look, then Ryan answered.

"He was after this–" he held up the phone "–but we have no idea who he was or why he would want it."

"Whose phone is that?"

"It belongs to the man that we arrested last night," said Beckett. "Castle and I found it just about an hour ago in a dumpster behind his apartment building. It looks like he dropped it off of the roof before he attacked Esposito."

"Have you confirmed that? Are his prints on it?"

"Actually, no, Sir," Beckett conceded. "But–"

"No 'but', Detective," Gates said, cutting her off. "You are going to have that confirmed before you take another step. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Sir," Beckett said grudgingly.

"Good," Gates replied, then added, "And do it right _now_. After you've put some shoes on."

With that, she returned to her office, leaving the two detectives to their jobs.

"I'll go and take that down to tech," Ryan said.

He hadn't taken more than two steps before he slapped his forehead with his free hand and turned around, fumbling in his pocket. He passed Beckett the printout that Dave had given him.

"Here, that's the only number that's stored on this phone," he said.

She gingerly took the sheet from him. "Go. I'll run this while you get confirmation."

She went to her computer and entered the number into the search mask before locking her screen and jogging upstairs to pull on her boots and replace the holster to her hip. When she returned to her desk, the computer had already found a registered owner for the phone number.

Although the rational portion of her mind told her that at this point it was nothing but speculation, she couldn't help but think that this was the name that she'd been looking for for almost thirteen years. The name of the man who was responsible for her mother's murder, Montgomery's, and so many, maybe countless, others'.

…

"I'll see what I can do," Esposito said into his phone before hanging up.

He actually had slept well, or at least as well as possible after an experience like he'd had the previous night, and thanks to the painkillers his leg felt almost normal aside from a certain numbness. He checked his gun, which he'd kept on him during the night, then heaved himself off of the bed and limped out of his room. Out on the corridor he turned right, heading toward the two uniformed officers that stood guard in front of Preston's room. As he came nearer, Esposito waved their offers of help away.

"I think it's time you had a break," he said to them. "Why don't you go and get some coffee?"

The meaning behind his words was clear, and the two officers neither objected nor hesitated as they left. As they rounded the corner on their way to the elevators, he opened the door and stepped into the room.

"Good morning, Mr Preston," he said, dropping into the chair that stood next to the bed.

Preston just stared back at him. His right forearm and shoulder were wrapped in thick bandages, and both of his wrists were cuffed to the bed's metal rungs.

"I'd like to talk to you about your employer," Esposito went on, "Mr… Garving, I think."

Preston didn't flinch, and someone else would have come to the conclusion that he didn't know the name. But Esposito noticed how Preston's eyes subtly widened, and that was answer enough for him. He grinned as he pushed himself up and stood.

"Thank you, Mr Preston. Have a nice time in prison."

Restraining his suddenly flaring anger, he turned and left the room without another word. He wanted to kill that bastard. Not for putting a knife in his leg and trying to kill him, no. That was nothing. Okay, he was mad because of that, too, but it wasn't enough to make him contemplate going back in and putting a bullet between the man's eyes. That the guy was in league with the man that was responsible for Beckett's mom's murder, Montgomery's death and Beckett being shot almost was. The only thing that restrained him from actually doing it was the knowledge that a slime bag like Preston wasn't worth going to prison for.

He took his phone out of his pocket after he was back in his room and pressed the callback button.

"It's him," he said as soon as the person on the other side picked up, bypassing any greeting. "Just be careful, okay?"

…

In scrubs and a lab coat, Smith looked like he belonged. The clipboard he carried, which he'd snatched from a stack of prepared examination forms, rounded off his appearance. He calmly strode through the corridors, took the elevator up to the third floor, and once there slowly made his way to his target. He kept his right hand loosely in the pocket of his coat, making sure the latex gloves and syringe were still there.

He knew there would be guards stationed outside of the room, but he had a plan for that. Going through the lines he'd prepared one final time, he rounded the corner to the corridor in question, and stopped. There was nobody out there. He checked that he was in fact on the right floor before he proceeded to the room. Looking down the corridor one last time, he pulled on the gloves before he opened the door and entered.

He instantly recognized Preston, even though he'd only seen him once before. The man's eyes were open, and staring at him. Smith was tempted to smile as he saw recognition flash across Preston's features, the pieces coming together in the man's mind.

Preston knew that he was not going to live much longer, since the cop had been in a couple of minutes ago, confronting him with the name of his employer. If they knew that much, then he was as good as dead. He doubted they really could get to him, but he knew that Garving would find out that Preston was responsible for the cops finding out about him, and that meant his certain death.

As did this man's sudden appearance. Preston remembered having seen him together with Weston, and he could see in the man's eyes that the visit was deliberate. In all likelihood, he was here to kill him.

_Might as well get it over with now_, he thought, swallowing as the man stepped up to the bed, placing the clipboard on the chair.

"Hello Mr Preston," Smith said with a false, polite smile. "My name is Dr Smith, and I'm going to check up on you."

Smith took one look at the IV bag that hung above the bed, then closed the drip and disconnected the tube from the bag. Holding it in one hand, he shoved the other into his pocket and retrieved the syringe.

"This will help you sleep," he said as he plugged the syringe into the free end of the tube, and quickly emptied it.

Then he reaffixed the tube to the IV bag and opened the drip again.

"Goodbye, Mr Preston," he said, putting the syringe back into his pocket and picking up the clipboard before he left.

There was still nobody on the corridor as Smith came out again. _Good_. The injection would work within a minute or two, much sooner than anyone would notice. His feeling of getting a handle on the situation being restored, Smith slipped out onto the stairwell.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: I'm not creative enough to have characters of my own that are anything like them.  
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**A/N: I know it's kinda long… But I hope it doesn't drag.  
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* * *

><p><em>For what it's worth, it was worth all the while<em>

"He's not responding, Sir." reported the taller man, standing in the door frame.

He stood a little below six feet. His already mostly gray hair, which he kept short, and the lines on his face indicated that he was well on his way to fifty, maybe beyond. Despite that, he had an athletic figure, which at the moment, was hidden under his gray suit.

The man he'd been talking to stood at the window, looking out on the beach and the sea beyond. In the midday sun, the view was magnificent.

He was almost a half foot shorter than his employee, and visibly older, too. Still, he took great pride in staying physically fit, thus there was not the slightest hint of a paunch under his white shirt.

"Then we'll have to assume he's failed, Charles" he replied. "In which case, we're sure to have some visitors in a couple of hours. Twelve years I've been waiting for this to happen. When I learned that she was training to become a cop, I knew it would come down to this. Somehow, I knew… Only the old fool Montgomery and his knowledge prevented me from taking… preemptive measures. Even dying didn't put a stop to him."

Garving turned away from the window and walked to his desk, pouring himself a drink from the lone bottle of whiskey that stood in one of the corners. He took a sip, savoring the alcohol's taste.

"Should I call for the helicopter?" asked Charles.

Garving grunted. "No need. Running's not gonna end this." He paused. "Call Vasil. Headstrong that she is, she's never cared much for her own life. But she's made the mistake of caring about the lives of others… people who are a lot more vulnerable than she is, and even more so right now."

A slight smirk appeared on Charles' lips. "So where should I send him?"

"I hear the writer has a beautiful young daughter… And you know how Vasil likes his prey."

"What about Beckett? Shouldn't we kill her, too?"

"That wouldn't change much, I'm afraid. The others would carry on. Especially now that they know who I am. Besides, there's still Montgomery's old friend with his stalemate scheme. He might bring me down if I killed her."

"As you wish, Sir." Charles tilted his head, turning to leave.

As Charles walked out, Garving drained the last drops of liquid from his glass, then put it down and walked around the desk. Sitting down in his large leather-covered desk chair, he opened a drawer and checked his trusty old Beretta. Pulling back the slide, he relished the sounds of the well-oiled metal parts working together just as they were supposed to. The slide snapped back into position as he released it, pulling a round from the cartridge into the chamber.

Smiling to himself, he flipped off the safety and placed the handgun on the desk, behind the small filing box, so that it was invisible to anyone who came through the door. Satisfied, he leaned back in his chair and waited.

…

Castle was in his kitchen, freshly showered and dressed, helping himself to a large cup of coffee before he would head back to the precinct, when his phone rang. He set the coffee pot aside and picked up the device, anticipation flaring up when he saw Beckett's image on the screen.

"What is it, Kate?" he said by way of greeting.

"Listen, Castle," she replied, "tech pulled a number and prints from the phone. The prints match Preston's, so it's definitely his phone. Now the number," she paused, as if to gather herself. "It belongs to a Mr. Rufus Garving, or rather his beach house in the Hamptons. I'll be by your place in ten, we'll talk on the ride there."

"Wait," he said, "please tell me we're doing this right. With backup, and an arrest warrant."

"Since when do you care so much about protocol?" she asked, sounding a little amused.

"It's not about protocol," he shot back, "it's about making sure that we get out of there alive. Preferably without that guy getting away because of some protocol violation."

"Sorry," she said. "I couldn't get hold of a judge, so we'll have to do this without the warrant. But Ryan's in the car with me, and we have a whole tactical team riding out there now." A beat of silence passed before she added, "I'm not going to take chances, Castle."

"Good," was the only reply he could think of. "I'll be outside, then."

"See you," she said, then hung up.

Slipping the phone into his jeans pocket, he cast a longing gaze at the coffee he'd just poured. He took a sip from the still hot beverage, then opened a cupboard and took out three metal travel mugs, distributing the remaining contents of the pot among them. After taking another sip from the cup he'd be leaving, he grabbed the three mugs and headed for the door.

"Rick?"

Castle turned to see Mansfield, leaning against the study's door frame, looking at him.

"Where're you headed to?"

"We've a lead on another suspect," Castle replied, "We're going to take him in."

"With backup," Mansfield said, a statement, not a question. "How dangerous do you think it'll be?"

Castle shrugged self-consciously. "I hope not too much so."

He set the mugs down on the small side table before he put on his shoes and coat.

"Look," he said, "it's a long story, but I've got to be there."

Mansfield nodded. "Your call, Rick. Just be careful." He paused, a smirk tugging at his lips. "I don't have to remind you of that one time where you–"

"No, you don't," Castle said over him. "And I will."

He opened the door and picked up the mugs. "See you later."

Shutting the door behind him, he let out a low sigh. At least it hadn't been Alexis who'd caught him leaving. He wasn't sure if he'd been able to brush off her questions as easily as he'd just done with Mansfield's. Because he knew that 'dangerous' was a euphemistic description for what he–they–were going to walk into.

…

"Not that I'm complaining about having proper backup," Castle said as he slipped into the back seat of Beckett's cruiser, "but what happened to 'keeping this under wraps'?"

Looking in the rear-view mirror as she eased the car back into the mid-day traffic, Beckett answered, "Attack on the precinct."

Castle's eyes widened. "What?"

"Someone dressed in a police uniform entered the building and tried to take Preston's phone," she explained. "He took Ryan hostage, and shot one of the uniforms."

"Oh God," Castle groaned. "But you're fine," he said to Ryan, "so that means… you stopped him."

"Gates put a round in his head," said Ryan.

"Is that… good?" Castle asked.

"Well, at least he won't cause any more trouble," said Beckett. "But on the other hand, he can't tell us anything… Who he is, if he was working for anyone. Might be better that way, though."

He understood. That he'd tried to steal the phone strongly suggested that he'd been working for the dragon, and that could mean that he'd known about Montgomery, like Lockwood had. That the man was dead mean he wouldn't be able to spill the secret. Still, if they happened to catch the man who was behind this, _Rufus Garving_, he reminded himself, alive, then they might not be able to stop him from uncovering the late captain's dark past.

He wondered if Beckett planned to bring him in in cuffs or in a body bag.

"Who– who was shot?" he asked.

"Officer Hughes," replied Ryan, grimacing as though the memory caused him physical pain.

Despite not being a cop, Castle knew all the officers who worked in homicide; surprisingly many of them were fans of his books. It was actually only surprising for the ones who'd been fans before Nikki Heat – he suspected that some had only started reading them since he'd become Beckett's partner. He'd signed a whole stack of books for a variety of officers, too. As was his habit when he was at a signing, he chatted with the everyone he signed a book for, and thus he'd come to know odd bits and pieces about most of the regular occupants of the homicide floor.

He tried to remember what he knew about Hughes. His first impression was that he was a loner, quiet, doing his work with a lot of dedication, but rather staying for himself. When he'd come to Castle, asking if the writer could maybe sign his copy of "Hell Hath No Fury", Castle had been surprised, but taken the chance to pry a few things from the young officer. Hughes had a girlfriend, a college student who was working on her master's degree. Script writing, if he recalled correctly. He'd never met her, and he hoped that the first time wouldn't be at her boyfriend's funeral.

The fact that Beckett had said "shot" and not "killed" let him hope.

"How's his status?"

"I guess he's still in surgery," said Ryan. "No news is good news, I think."

Castle sank back into the seat. After a moment, he remembered the travel mugs that he still held in his hands, and offered two of them to Beckett and Ryan. His eyes might have tricked him, but he thought he could see small smiles on each of their faces.

The remainder of the ride out to Long Island passed in silence. Castle hadn't asked where exactly in the Hamptons the house was, but by the length of the ride and the scenery that passed outside of the car, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had been at the furthest end of the island.

A little before that, though, Beckett took a turn off of the highway and onto a smaller road. After another couple of minutes she stopped the car in the cover of a set of big bushes. It was already getting dark outside, since the ride had taken probably three hours. She motioned for the two men to get out and walked around the car to the trunk. She opened it and grabbed their bulletproof vests, tossing one to each of the men. They draped their coats over the trunk before strapping the vests on, then pulled the coats on again, covering the vests, except for the slight bulge created by the protective gear.

Both cops checked their weapons, making sure they were well reachable, before the three set off to walk to the house.

The bushes extended up until the gate that lead onto the property, growing over the large metal construction and along the driveway as far as one could see from the outside. Just before the gate, they were greeted by a police officer in full tactical gear, dark vest, helmet, gloves and knee and elbow pads. An automatic rifle was slung across his back, a pistol strapped to his right thigh.

"Detective Beckett?"

"That's me," Beckett answered, extending her hand.

"Lieutenant McDuff," the man replied, shaking the proffered hand. "I have my boys spread out around the premises, but so far everything looks quiet."

"Have you seen anyone in there?" asked Ryan.

"There's at least two people inside. Moving shadows in one of the upstairs windows, but you can't see them from here. But for all we know there could be a dozen just lying around and waiting. May I ask what this is about, Detective?"

Beckett hesitated. She didn't want to say too much, but the lieutenant deserved to know, since he and his men might be putting their lives at risk in this operation.

"The man who owns this house is strongly suspected to have hired a professional killer to murder a man. Upon his arrest, that killer injured a colleague of ours." She paused, letting the words sink in before she continued with the even less encouraging information. "I'm certain that he did it, but we don't have substantial proof for an arrest warrant. So officially this is not going to be a suspect take-down, but just a _friendly_ interview. Which is why I would like you and your men to stay out here, to act as backup if anything goes south in there. Alright?"

The lieutenant nodded. "Guess we can make that work. You have radio?"

"Not yet," said Beckett.

McDuff pulled a small box radio from one of his many utility pockets and handed it to her.

"Take my backup," he said, "set it to permanent transmit and put it into your pocket. That way we'll know instantly if you need help."

"Thanks," she replied, handing the device off to Ryan, who pressed the required buttons, then stashed it into one of the pockets of his vest.

Then he went a little ways away from the group, to test the transmission quality. When McDuff gave him a thumbs up, he returned.

"Can you get in through the gate?" asked Castle, eyeing the sturdy looking metal bars.

"It just has a lock," replied the lieutenant, "and _that_ we can blow up."

Satisfied by the short exchange and their preparation, Beckett walked over to the intercom set into a steel panel on the far side of the gate. She rang the bell, and only moments later static crackled in the speaker, followed by a male voice.

"Yes?"

Beckett swallowed. _Here goes nothing_. "This is Detective Beckett, NYPD. I would like to speak with Mr. Garving, please."

Silence.

"On what matter?" asked the voice.

"Are you Rufus Garving?" she returned.

"No."

"I would like to discuss the matter with him personally," she replied.

Another silence, longer this time.

"Please come in," the voice said, terminating the connection with a clicking sound. A motor began to whir somewhere, and half of the gate swung inward.

"Let's go," Beckett said. She trudged through the gate, Ryan and Castle following closely.

…

Vasil peered through the scope of his rifle, which was trained on a set of windows on the top floor of an apartment building. He grumbled. The loft's inhabitants had drawn all the curtains carefully closed, and they appeared to be made of a very thick and dark material, since almost no light penetrated through them. There were no shadows either, so Vasil had no clue how many people, if any, were inside.

After five more minutes of fruitless spying, he left his perch on the roof of the building that was located across the street from his target, disassembling and packing up his rifle before he rode the elevator down and walked to his car, which he'd parked one street away. He placed the rifle case on the back seat before he ran through his options.

The apartment had three permanent residents, the writer, his mother and his daughter. _Odd arrangement_, he thought absently. That didn't much matter to him, though. None of the three would be a match for him. The one question left was how to get into the building, or past the doorman, to be precise, without arousing any suspicion. He could, of course, kill the doorman. One more body wouldn't be an existential problem, though it might give things away if anyone entered the building before he made it out again. Plus, Vasil preferred to keep his jobs isolated. Randomly killing people who were in the way was not his style, and he only did it when he had no other choice. That hadn't happened often.

He opened the glove compartment and fished out a simple mobile phone. He hadn't really had time to conduct research on his target, but he'd made enough to copy the apartment's phone number into his phone's contact book. It never hurt to be prepared. Grudgingly he pressed the call button, holding the phone to his ear. There was a click, then a young girl's voice came through the line.

"Hello, this is Alexis Castle speaking."

So she was home. _Good_. "Uh, Castle, you said?" he responded with a strong Russian accent. "Sorry, wrong number."

He ended the call. So at least the girl was home, which meant that he would be able to carry out his assignment. He stowed the phone back in the glove compartment, then turned around and fetched another bag from the back seat. From it, he pulled a simple rain jacket with the logo of one of the many small messenger service firms printed on the back, and a baseball cap with the same logo.

The last item remaining in the bag was a stuffed manila envelope, the kind that could contain anything from papers to a pound or two of explosives. This one was harmless, though, containing parts of a newspaper, only serving as a dummy package. He disliked explosives anyway. They were messy and volatile.

Vasil preferred knives. Small, easy to hide blades that were just as deadly but more precise. Sure, they required him to get close up to his target, but that way he could be sure that they were really dead. Shooting someone from a distance always held the risk of missing, and blowing them up was just imprecise. Sometimes he did resort to guns, but only when left with no other option.

To him, there was nothing better than a quick, clean cut.

He exchanged his black coat for the messenger jacket, put the cap on his head and, after closing the bag, slung it across his back, fastening the strap over his chest. With practiced motions he made sure that his knives were all in position before he opened the door.

The street was deserted as he got out and rounded his car, producing a folding bike from the trunk. He rode it down the street to his target, where he chained it to a lamp post, then jogged up the steps leading to the door. It was locked, but before he could search for the bell, the doorman came over. Vasil stood back as the door was opened.

"Can I help you?" the doorman, who certainly was at least fifty years old and carried around a belly that Vasil guessed was the product of a sitting job and a penchant for food, asked.

"Delivery for Castle," Vasil said, not a hint of his earlier Russian accent left in his voice. The years he'd spent cultivating the New York accent had served him well on multiple occasions.

"Mr. Castle is out," the doorman informed him.

"It's for Ms." He made a show of pulling a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket, glancing at it as if checking the name. "Alexis Castle, actually," Vasil replied.

If the doorman was in any way puzzled that a teenager would get messenger deliveries, he didn't show it. Instead, he said, "Please wait a moment," before closing the door and walking to his desk. When he returned, he said, "I can sign for it, and bring it up to her."

_This is taking too much time._ "Sorry, she has to sign for it personally," Vasil insisted.

The doorman sighed, then stood back and opened the door fully.

Vasil gave him a nod and a "thank you" as he walked in and headed for the elevator.

Up in the loft, Jake Mansfield stood by the door, every muscle in his body tense. His instincts told him that the situation was bad, or at least it was going to be. The caller, who had claimed to have dialed the wrong number, was one thing, and on its own maybe even a credible coincidence. But that now, hardly five minutes later, there was a messenger with a delivery for Alexis, who had told him that she'd never gotten anything by messenger, smelled of danger. _To hell with smell, it stinks_.

This was exactly the sort of thing that Rick had hired him for. He'd sent Alexis and Martha upstairs, with orders to lock themselves in the bathroom and call the police if anything happened downstairs. Of all the doors on the second floor, he'd found that one to be the sturdiest, and it opened into the hall, so kicking it down wouldn't really work.

He absently checked his gun again, then decided to remove the shoulder holster and instead keep the weapon tucked into his pants at the small of his back. Out of sight from a potential attacker, and still readily available.

When the bell chimed, he took a look through the peep hole. Outside stood a man in jeans, a rain jacket that looked far too thin for early January temperatures and a baseball cap that partially hid his face. A bag was strapped to his back, and in his hands he held a simple manila folder and a clipboard with a form.

Curling the fingers of his right hand around the grip of his gun, he first flipped the lock and then opened the door with his left hand, as far as the chain would allow. He looked through the crack and down at the messenger.

"Can I help you?"

The man looked up at Mansfield, and for a fleeting moment his face showed surprise. Then he regained control of his features, his expression going completely blank.

"A delivery for Alexis Castle," he said. "Personally."

_Fat chance_, Mansfield thought. The man obviously hadn't expected to see him here, and although he looked just like an average messenger, something about him felt wrong. Mansfield took another, longer look at him. The jacket really looked too thin to be able to contain any heat in this weather. The jeans were clean. His face was… _Hang on. The jeans… they're too clean_, he realized. At least for a bike messenger who was riding around the city all day. A guy like that was bound to get dirt on his pants, and his shoes no less. As he thought about it, he noticed that there was just a single bead of sweat on the man's forehead, which had formed just about now. _Nervous_.

As if on cue, he cleared his throat. "Look, could you just get her, please? I have more deliveries to make."

Mansfield hesitated a moment, then an idea formed in his mind. "Of course," he replied. "Just a minute."

He closed the door, making sure to lock it again, then took the stairs up two at a time. He knocked on Alexis' door, entering after she called him in.

"I need your help," he began, silently praying that Rick wouldn't kill him when he learned of this.

Vasil felt the perspiration building under his cap. He wasn't sure if it was from the building's heating or a growing nervousness. Then again, he was a professional, he wasn't supposed to get nervous. Still, this man wasn't supposed to be there. Who was he, anyway? And why was he getting the door, acting all protective? The only conclusion that came to him, as he waited in the hall, was that the man was some kind of guard, watching over the writer's family. A plainclothes cop, maybe, or perhaps a private bodyguard. It was the only thing that made sense to him at the moment.

For a moment, after the realization had come to him, he thought of aborting the job. After all, he had not been hired to take on a trained fighter, who might well be armed. But then he thought of how he had successfully handled unexpected complications in the past. There'd been some nasty ones, but he'd lived through them all. So far.

The man, whoever he was, was the only obstacle standing between him and his target. All he needed to do was overpower him. Granted, the man was a lot bigger than him, but even the biggest man could only do so much with a knife between his ribs. Vasil had noticed that he'd kept the chain on the door, but he was confident that he could kick it down with one or two attempts.

Shifting the load in his arms, he reached into his left sleeve and pulled out a long, slender knife, hiding it under the envelope.

Mansfield stood with his hand on the door handle, Alexis a few meters behind, just so that she would be visible through the cracked open door. He peered through the peep hole, seeing the man where he had left him, waiting patiently.

If the man indeed had a different objective than delivering a package, he didn't seem deterred by Mansfield's presence. At least not enough to not go through with his job, whatever it was. He was aware of the possibility that the package could be rigged with explosives, but somehow he doubted that. In that case, he wouldn't have needed the whole business with Alexis having to sign personally. Except, maybe, to make sure that she really was there. But then there had been the strange phone call.

He didn't know what to expect here. All he knew was his gut was telling him he'd better be careful. Really careful. He gave Alexis an encouraging nod, then opened the door, leaving the chain in place.

"Can we hurry up, please?" the messenger inquired, shooting him an annoyed look.

"She's here now," he told the messenger, "if you hand me the form, I'll pass it to her so she can sign it."

_Clever,_ Vasil thought, _not giving me a chance to get close to her. I wonder if he knows…_

He turned the clipboard around and held it out for the man. He let his eyes wander to the girl, taking in her youthful form, almost smiling. Oh, he would have a little fun before he'd kill her. Just a bit… But his time window was closing. He needed to act soon.

Mansfield took the clipboard, turning away from the door to pass it on to Alexis. The girl took a step forward, her brows knitted in thought. She was just reaching out to accept the board when her eyes went wide, with what he presumed was recognition, and the raised hand flew to her face, covering her mouth.

A moment later he felt something pierce the skin of his right forearm, and he let out a small cry, as much surprised as hurt.

When the girl reacted, Vasil knew it was now or never. He didn't know what exactly she was reacting to, but the look on her face spoke of recognition. The chance that she recognized his voice, once with the Russian accent and over the phone, now with purely American sound, was slim, but he had to admit that it was there. So he had no choice but to push his luck, and use the man's distraction to his advantage. He let the envelope slip from his arm and brought the knife up, reaching through the door as far as he could, and stabbed it into the man's forearm, making sure to keep the blade as parallel to the bone as he could.

Reacting to Mansfield's outcry, he took a step back, retreating his arm, then threw himself at the door, putting his shoulder where the chain was connected to it. The chain rattled and he let out the breath he'd been holding, but the door was still intact. He repeated his motion, but as he jumped at the door again, it was slammed against him, painfully connecting with his shoulder, sending him flying at the opposite wall.

Mansfield had recovered from the initial shock of the stabbing and Vasil's attempt to knock down the door and had put his whole weight, guided mostly by his left arm, into pushing the door closed. The thud of a body connecting with the solid mass, was in this moment very satisfying.

"Upstairs, Alexis," he said as calmly as he could. "Call the cops. And an ambulance," he added, noticing that she was still staring at the knife in his arm. It was painful, alright, but he'd had worse.

As the girl hurried to comply, he briefly assessed his options. It was either locking the door and waiting for the police, or going out to fight. The first option had the appeal of not risking further injury, but on the other hand it would take time for the cops to get here, and by then his attacker could've made a run for it.

He guessed that his wound would be okay as long as the knife remained where it was and he avoided taking hits on that arm. With the gun, his chances weren't bad.

He drew the pistol with his left hand, wincing slightly as he rested his right on the door handle. He checked the hall before he opened the door, hesitating for a moment when he didn't see Vasil anywhere. But he'd made his choice. He removed the chain, then pushed the handle and slowly opened the door.

When the door was halfway open, Vasil pushed off of the wall next to the door and delivered a kick to the lock, pushing both the door and Mansfield back inside the loft. The big man stumbled back, which Vasil used to dart inside. He didn't hesitate and went straight for his opponent, planting a foot on the man's injured forearm as he drew a second knife from his other sleeve.

Mansfield growled in pain, but at least the adrenaline rush brought him back around. Watching Vasil produce the knife, he carefully shifted his weight more onto his right side, blocking out the pain in his arm.

His gun had fallen from his hand when he'd been knocked back, and now lay a few feet away from him. He tensed, waiting for his attacker to present him with an opening.

And it came, when Vasil leaned forward, knife raised to deliver the fatal blow. Mansfield lurched, swinging his left leg up, and caught Vasil in the side with his knee. The killer fell over and away from him. He rolled back the other way, pushing himself to his knees with the help of his left hand. Before Vasil could get back up, he'd found his gun and, still kneeling, leveled it at him.

"Freeze," he growled.

Vasil slowly rolled to his knees, careful not to move so rashly that he would provoke Mansfield. He was nonplussed. _The guy's got a knife in his arm and a door in the head and he's still fighting?_ At the moment, though, there was nothing he could do about it. Unless he wanted to risk getting shot, which was not really high on his list.

"I said FREEZE!" Mansfield said, louder and just a notch more threatening. "And drop that knife."

Vasil complied, letting his weapon clatter to the floor. What else could he do? He'd just screwed up a job. Royally.

The police arrived only a few minutes later, taking Vasil into custody. A paramedic had come up alongside the officers and was looking at Mansfield's arm as they led the attacker out.

"Sir, by all means, I should be taking you to a hospital," the young woman insisted.

"Just patch me up," he said, "and I'll swing by the hospital tomorrow."

"No," she replied, "the stuff I've got here will keep that arm of yours closed for a couple of hours at most. Not enough to last until tomorrow."

"Look, that man came for her," he said, nodding his head to Alexis, who was slowly coming down the stairs. "And its my job to look after her."

"You can't do that with a knife in your arm," she stated evenly.

"Obviously. Which is why I'm asking you to take it out and patch me up."

She stared at him.

"Please?" he added.

She shook her head. "You stopped that guy, didn't you? Think there's another one coming?"

"No idea," he said, shrugging. "But I'm not gonna leave my post until I know there won't be one."

She huffed in exasperation. "Can't you call someone to take over for you?"

"Nope."

"This is ridiculous. You know you're not doing yourself a favor, right? Say another one comes, tomorrow maybe, and you can't use that arm _at all_. You think that's gonna do her any good?"

He was about to snap back at her when Alexis, having come over, gingerly touched his shoulder.

"You should go to a hospital," she said, her voice steady, not betraying that she'd witnessed how the knife had been stabbed into his arm. "I can come with you, and I'm sure if we explain, they'll let me stay in the room while they take care of your arm."

He wasn't sure if that was such a good idea, considering that a hospital was big and someone could easily hide in the crowd and get closer than he liked, but then he didn't really think there would be another killer trying to get to Alexis. At least not today.

"Alright," he said. "Does your gran–" He interrupted himself as he saw Martha on the stairs, nodding at him. He couldn't say for sure if her nod was just confirming his unspoken question or if there was something more in it. However, even at a distance her eyes seemed to glisten a little. "Have you called your dad?" he asked Alexis.

"No," she replied, "I'm going to–"

"Don't," he said quickly. "He said they were going to follow up a lead on another suspect in their case, so I don't think he'd appreciate being disturbed. And besides, apart from this," he lifted his right arm, "everything's peachy."

Alexis gave him an even look, not quite sharing his sarcastic attitude toward the situation.

…

Rufus Garving nursed another glass of whiskey–the third that day–as he heard the doorbell ring. Moments later the door was opened and a few words were exchanged before people stepped inside and the door was closed again. He put the glass down as the visitors began to climb the stairs, then stood and straightened himself.

Beckett was a little surprised at her even mood as she entered the house. Considering who the man probably was, she would have expected to feel more… agitated… and less detached. As it was, though, she almost felt like this was just another case, just another possible suspect to interview. Except that somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that it wasn't.

Ryan and Castle were right behind her as she entered the large and richly appointed room, fanning out to flank her as she stepped in front of the desk, for the first time laying eyes on the man who, according to the evidence and her gut feelings, was behind her mom's murder.

Once more, she was having a staring contest with a devil, but this one didn't blink.

This one grinned at her, spreading his arms as though he was greeting her jovially, like a host would greet a friend coming to his party.

"Detective Beckett," he said, "pleased to meet you."

"Rufus Garving, I presume?" she asked, not letting his open manner faze or distract her.

"That's right," he answered. "What can I do for New York's finest?"

"You could tell us what you know about Anthony Preston."

"I'm sorry, who?"

"Anthony Preston."

He made a show of scratching the back of his head. "Uh, I don't think I know anybody by that name."

"But he knows you," said Ryan, entering the conversation. "Your number is in his phone."

"Is that so?" Garving asked. "Well, you can look my number up in the phone directory. I suppose this man got it from there."

Ryan opened his mouth to respond, but Beckett talked over him. "Mr. Garving, Anthony Preston is a professional killer, and a suspect in the murder of a Mr. Karl Weston." She watched him closely, but the man facing her across the desk didn't give a single sign that he knew the victim.

"Weston, you say? No," he said, shrugging, "can't say I know that name, either."

"Someone infiltrated a police station today," she returned, "trying to get this phone. I don't suppose you know anything about that, either."

"Can't say I do," he said.

"A shame," she replied, "because that man now sits comfortably in a cell. He had a lot to say…"

Garving's pulse went up. _They've arrested Cole?_ he thought. _Damn. But he wouldn't talk. Cole would never sell me out to the police. Would he?_ He maintained his even expression, not letting his worry rise up to his face. But he could not prevent the single bead of sweat from forming at his hairline, from where it subsequently trailed down the side of his face.

It was confirmation enough for Beckett to know that she was on the right track. Though it wasn't exactly a blink, at least she'd made the devil sweat. And she kept at it.

"He told us, for example, that he's been doing quite some work for you. The kind of work that is illegal and involves weapons and living people being rendered to dead bodies."

"I already said that I don't know him," Garving replied, "so I don't know why he would tell you that." He added a little anger to his voice. "In fact, I think I am going to sue him. This is calumny. Maddox was his name, you said?"

Beckett favored him with a stare, which he returned. For a long moment, she searched his eyes, waiting for the spark of realization. When it didn't come, she allowed herself a small, mirthless smirk.

"I didn't say anything about his name, Mr. Garving. But thank you for confirming that you do know him."

Garving's expression was hard and still as a stone mask. Inside, though, he cursed himself. _Idiot_, he thought, _now she's got you. Time to change tactics._

"You're playing a dangerous game, Detective," he said. "This won't be enough to convince the DA that I have anything to do with what you're trying to pin on me, and it sure as hell won't hold in court."

Beckett didn't say anything. She just kept staring at him, studying his face. She wondered if any of the lines on his face had been caused by the murders he'd ordered, or if he'd always been cold enough to just shrug it off as part of what he was doing. Strangely she felt even calmer than before entering his office. It was as if the more nervous he became, the calmer and more detached she was. She was now almost at the point where it felt like she was watching a stranger talking to him, cornering him. She remembered Montgomery telling her that animals were the most unpredictable when cornered. And that that was also when they made mistakes.

She subtly raised her hand a little, brushing against her gun under her coat.

She knew she'd raised the stakes high when she'd thrown the first bluff at him. But when he hadn't called her, she'd kept raising it, and now she wasn't going to be the one to back away from going all in.

"We have evidence, Mr. Garving. Evidence that ties you to Mr. Preston. And we have the confession of Mr. _Maddox_, incriminating you in several other murder cases."

"I'd like to see that," he responded, fighting to maintain his calm demeanor. "And I'm sure my lawyer would like to see that, too. I'm not going to say another word without his consultation."

When a suspect lawyers up, it can always mean two things. Either he is truly innocent and feels that he is being maneuvered into trouble by the police, and he sees that move as the only one left to him to assert his rights. Or he is guilty and tries to worm his way out of the spot that the police have caught him in, or at least tries to stall.

Over the years as a detective, Kate Beckett had developed an instinct for which of the two was the case when a suspect demanded to call his lawyer. Usually she felt annoyed by it, since lawyers hardly did any more than make her job difficult, but aside from that she had a sort of feeling if the suspect was actually guilty or not. Of course that feeling wasn't always right, but there had been enough cases to confirm her instincts. And right now, they screamed "Guilty."

"Fine by me," she said, "but pointless."

She paused, studying Garving's expression as she took a moment to reflect on the situation. This was the moment that the last thirteen years of her life had been leading up to, she was sure of that. She was facing the man who was responsible for her mother's and Roy's deaths, and so many more. His expression betrayed nothing, yet he had all but admitted to what she'd accused him of. And he'd made mistakes. If just the mention of having arrested Maddox–whose identity would have to be confirmed, of course–was enough to get him to squirm, then she'd just have to push him a little more to get him to make his last mistake.

She knew it was a lot of a risk, but she didn't see a better option. It would have been a lot easier if Lieutenant McDuff and his men hadn't been able to listen to the conversation over the radio, but the situation was as it was, and, on second thought, she actually wanted to have that connection, just in case. She would just have to be careful to steer clear of Montgomery's involvement in everything. It wasn't like Garving could really call her on that; not without incriminating himself.

"You think you're so clever," she said, lacing her voice with humor. "Never appearing in person, always sending someone else to do the interaction, and then killing them so they can't tell on you. I can't imagine how scared you must have been when my mom took up the Pulgatti case thirteen years ago. I guess at first you thought she wouldn't find anything, but when she started asking the right questions and found inconsistencies in the case, you got nervous. And when she was getting close to unraveling it, you had Dick Coonan kill her and her coworkers, knowing that Detectives Raglan and McCallister would help you make it look like random violence. Because you had them in your hand.

"Things were quiet for twelve years, but when Raglan called me you knew you couldn't let him talk, so you had Lockwood shoot him. Just bad luck for you that we caught Lockwood, wasn't it? But he was patient, and after a while he managed to get the job almost done. Killed McCallister in prison, and then you got him out so that he could finish it up. So that he could kill me. Only Roy Montgomery didn't let him. My friend sacrificed himself so that I could live. But you still sent someone after me, and he was almost successful."

She had to pause as memories of that night at the hangar invaded her mind. Seeing the sad determination in Montgomery's eyes, cradling his dead body, weeping over him. She remembered the somber mood at the funeral, his wife and children quietly sobbing. Sharing a look with Castle while she gave the eulogy, knowing that no matter what she'd told him the afternoon before, he would stand with her. Hearing him shout her name in the same instant as the bullet hit her. Lying in the grass as the blood spilled out of her in time with her weakening heartbeat, helplessly listening to Castle begging her to stay, telling her that he loved her.

She almost felt the pain in her chest again, but she knew that it wasn't real. She did her best to swallow it down, focusing on the room around her, on the man in front of her, not ten feet away.

During her short speech, Garving had become more and more aggravated. He tried not to show it, but he couldn't really help himself. He was a person who tried to dominate each and every aspect of his life. He put himself above the people he interacted with, naturally regarding them as inferior. He had been called arrogant a lot in the past, but in reality it was far more than arrogance. It was a need to be in control that was driving him. A need to assert his strength, his power, through any means necessary. When he was in control, he relished it. Making people do what he wanted, knowing they feared the consequences too much to resist. Or they just enjoyed their jobs too much to question him.

But when he felt the control of the situation slipping away from him, his self-control faded away, too. It was only thanks to his great experience and willpower that he did not allow Beckett to taunt him into making any more admissions she could use against him.

For so long he had tried to bury the evidence against him, killing everyone who came too close to him. Except for Roy Montgomery and Kate Beckett. Well, Montgomery was dead now, but his knowledge had protected him until about half a year ago. Until he had been foolish enough to stand up to Garving. And after that, it had protected Beckett.

_Let them know what they want,_ he thought, _but that protection doesn't extend to others._

"Congratulations, Detective," he said, channeling part of his anger into a chuckle. "It seems that you've built yourself quite a nice story there. It's logically sound, I'll give you that, except that it's got one flaw: you can't prove that it was me."

"Didn't you listen? We've got Maddox' confession."

_Oh no, she doesn't. I never told him any of that,_ he thought. _But what does it matter? He knows enough to bring me down without that. What I need now is time, so I can make sure that he won't talk again._

Out loud, he said, "Whatever lies that man told you won't prove anything."

Castle had been listening, staying back like Ryan, but now he couldn't keep quiet any more. "Even if you keep insisting that you don't know him, the jury isn't likely to believe you. They need a story, something that makes sense to them and stays true to the evidence. And I can tell you that everyone will buy this story."

That was what Garving had been waiting for. He couldn't address him directly, not without arousing suspicion, but now that Castle had inserted himself into the conversation, Garving had his chance.

"I don't think we've met, Mr… wait, Mr. Castle, isn't it? The writer. I've heard of your books. Supposedly quite good, though I'm afraid they're not my genre."

"Pity," Castle shot back.

"Yes," Garving said. "Do you have family, Mr. Castle? I myself don't have any, never quite had the chance…"

"I don't see that that's any of your business," Beckett cut in.

"Oh, wait, I think I recall something about a daughter…" Garving continued, unfazed by Beckett's interruption. "Yes, lovely young girl… How is she, Mr. Castle? I hope she's not home alone, you hear terrible things happening every day…"

The threat was so blatant that Castle couldn't prevent the blood draining from his face. He tried to swallow the sudden fear, but found that his throat was constricting. Reason had abandoned him altogether, giving way to the terror that his instincts instilled in him.

"Last time I checked, she wasn't," said Beckett. "Castle, why don't you call her?"

Truth be told, Garving's words had been like a kick to the gut, even though Alexis wasn't her daughter, and she felt nowhere as calm and controlled as she tried to appear. But she knew that Castle would be switching into panic mode if she didn't do something, so she forced herself to breathe evenly and channel her fear for his daughter into quiet rage at the man who, apparently, was toying with her life.

What helped her was the knowledge that Alexis really wasn't alone, that someone who she thought could be a capable fighter was there to look out for her. Someone who seemed to be loyal to Castle, which was just as important in this situation. Judging by the sound of her partner's rapid breathing, said knowledge seemed to have eluded him.

It took him a moment to register her words, then he fumbled in his pocket for his phone. But when he had it out, his hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble pressing the right buttons.

"Beckett," Ryan said quietly.

She turned around. Seeing Castle's problem, and knowing the reason for it, was like a shot of gas into the already crackling fire of her anger. She yanked the phone from his hand a little more forcefully than necessary and deftly navigated through his phone book to Alexis' entry and pressed the call button. Seeing that he was still shaking, she dismissed the thought of handing the phone to him and instead held it to her ear.

A surge of relief ran through her when the girl picked up only moments later.

"Dad?"

"Alexis," Beckett said. "It's Detective Beckett. Is everything alright?"

There was silence on the other end of the line. Beckett almost prompted the girl again, but Alexis beat her to it.

"Is–is my dad okay? Has something happened to him?"

"No, Alexis," she responded quickly. "I–I mean he's fine. Are you?"

She heard a sigh on the other end. "Thank you. And I'm fine, I guess…"

Beckett took a moment to show Castle a smile and give him an encouraging nod, although she sensed that there was something that Alexis wasn't telling her. She could only guess what it would do to Castle to hear her next words, but now she wanted to find out what there was, because Alexis did sound unusually troubled.

"What do you mean by 'I guess'?" she asked, trying hard not to sound too worried.

Another moment of silence. Absently, she noticed Castle tensing up at her question.

"I… something's happened, Detective Beckett." A pause.

"What happened, Alexis?" she inquired, speaking softly.

"There… there was a man. He said he had a package for me, and that I had to sign for it, but Mr. Mansfield wouldn't let him. So he tried to force his way in, and he and Mr. Mansfield fought and the man lost. I called the police and they arrested him, but he stabbed Mr. Mansfield in the arm, so now we're at the hospital, and the doctor's just looking at the arm–"

"Hey, Alexis," Beckett cut in, "take a breath, okay? You're not hurt, right? And Mr. Mansfield will be fine, too?"

"Yeah," Alexis replied, "yeah, I think so." She paused, and Beckett heard the sounds of a background conversation. "The doctor says it isn't too serious. A few weeks rest and he'll be good. They're going to do an X-ray just to be safe."

"Good," Beckett replied, "that's good. I think your dad wants to speak to you, now."

She held the phone out to Castle, who hurried to take it from her hand and press it to his ear. His tension ebbed away with every second that he stood there and listened to his daughter's voice, as his mind registered the fact that she was alright and unharmed. The shaking from the initial shock had already subsided while Beckett had been talking to her.

Leaving him to carry out a hushed conversation with Alexis, Beckett turned back to Garving. It might have been her imagination, but she thought that he looked a little afraid. As if his mask of calm and control had finally cracked and was about to crumble to pieces.

"Looks like your plan backfired," she said to him. "The killer you sent has been arrested, _without_ killing anyone."

His right eye twitched once. "What plan? And what killer? I don't think I know what you're talking about."

"Oh, I think you will, sooner or later anyway. In time, he will talk. Do you really think that denying will get your neck out of this?"

_No, not really,_ he thought. _Sounds like the girl has a guard… Whatever._ He bowed his head, placing his hands on the desktop to rest his weight on them. His control wasn't slipping any more; it was all but gone.

Thinking that he could control the situation, deny everything and make her go away empty-handed, he had allowed her in. He had been certain that she didn't know anything substantial enough to be dangerous; at least not on the legal way. That she wouldn't let go, now that she had a lead on him, had been just as certain, but with a little time and leeway, he would have dealt with her.

_It was a calculated risk_, he told himself, _you couldn't have known that Cole would talk. Hell, you _trusted _him, and for good reason._

He had always refused to think of himself as a gambler. Gamblers take chances, they play with risk. The good ones simply are those who are lucky a couple more times than the others. He, on the other hand, calculated the risks, made plans for every likely event that he could think of before making a move. And he was good at it; the past twenty years had proved that.

But this time, he had failed. A couple of mistakes, and everything he had so carefully constructed was about to come undone. He had trusted others to fight his battles and they had failed him.

Charles was still there, somewhere in the house. He'd just have to call, and the man would stand in the door in a few seconds. Charles would fight for him, if he needed to, but considering the others' defeats, he was not in the mood to place his fate in the hands of yet another one of his employees.

He chuckled inwardly. A few minutes ago he might have been able to throw Beckett and her entourage out. Declare the conversation terminated. If she had a warrant, she'd have shown it already, so there would have been nothing that she could have done. But now that he had, accidentally, given her a little foothold, he seriously doubted that she would just go.

His right hand was only a few inches away from the gun he'd hidden earlier. He made a conscious effort not to glance at it and instead raised his eyes to meet Beckett's gaze. Seeing the determination radiating from her, he knew that this was it. She would not back down, and neither would he. He couldn't.

"Nice work, Detective," he said, chuckling despite himself. "Very nice work, indeed." His hand was now almost on the gun. "Too bad it'll all be for naught." His fingers were curling around the grip and he brought his arm up, aiming the gun at her.

He had always thought that he was fast, especially for his age, but apparently he had underestimated the two detectives. For a moment he had a clear aim at her, but then Ryan shouted for him to drop his gun, and he made the mistake to let that distract him for the split second she needed to get her gun out and point it at him.

Adrenaline rushed through his veins, widening his senses. He could hear their breathing almost as loud and clear as his own, noticed that Castle was staring at the scene from across the room, hand on its way to return his phone to his pocket.

Garving blinked once, an eternal second passing by. Then his lips curled into a mocking smile. At last, he realized, he wasn't following any carefully crafted plans. When it came down to it, he relied on a gamble. One that he probably wouldn't win. _Another mistake on today's tally,_ he thought.

He felt the first bullet tear into his shoulder just as his finger curled around the trigger. Reflexes contracted his muscles and his gun went off, the shot flying harmlessly toward the far wall.

Another round struck him, but the pain didn't even register in his mind any more. Two more followed in quick succession and he fell backwards into his chair, arms hanging limply down the sides.

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><p><strong>AN: Review, please? And if you find the few "original" characters I put into there too shallow, maybe you have some tips how I can make better characters in the future? :)**


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: So this is it. Final chapter. Be warned, there's a bit more cheese in here than in the rest of the story, but where else to place it if not the end? :P**

**In other things, I want to express special thanks to my very dedicated and patient beta reader, who never once complained about the kind of mistakes (like typos) I made, no matter how stupid they were. And without whom this story would have some little holes that I never even noticed. So, this is for you, Christine. Thanks a bunch, you're the best. :)  
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**If you like, go check out her profile: ~WriteChristineR  
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**And now, concluding the probably longest author's note I've written for this story: have a good read.  
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* * *

><p><em>It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right<em>

_I hope you had the time of your life_

For a long minute, nobody moved. Beckett and Ryan stood perfectly still, their guns still trained on Garving's body. Castle's right hand was frozen on its way to returning the phone to the pocket of his coat, his eyes wide. About two feet to his left, the bullet from Garving's single shot stuck in the wall.

Beckett's heels clacked loudly on the wooden floor as she walked around the desk and, using a handkerchief that lay on the desktop, extracted the gun from the dead man's hand. She laid both on the desk before she reached out and felt his neck for a pulse.

She knew that it must have looked ridiculous, considering the holes in his forehead and right cheek, upper chest and stomach, but with someone like him, she was willing to expect anything. Well, anything short of a rising from the dead. In any case, the absence of a heartbeat gave her a bit of comfort.

She shook her head, straightening. "He's dead."

Slowly, Ryan lowered his gun, but still kept it at his side. Castle, finally regaining his bearings, completed the motion that he'd seemed to have been stuck in, placing his phone in his pocket before clearing his throat.

"That's it? It's over?" he asked, as though he couldn't quite believe it.

Beckett couldn't manage to contain a chuckle at the slightly plaintive sound of his voice.

"What?" she asked. "Wasn't that conclusion dramatic enough for New York's number one mystery writer?"

"I don't know," he returned, "but it does seem a little… simple, for a case like this."

"Oh, so you would've liked it more complicated then?"

"Yes… No… Just a little less straightforward, more… sophisticated, you know?"

Fortunately for him, she did know. Or at least she knew _him_ well enough to not take his words too seriously. Not the least bit seriously, actually. She let out a small laugh.

"Can't have everything, Castle."

He huffed a breath. "I know. It's a shame… But I am glad that it's over now."

"Not quite," said Ryan, "you're forgetting the heck load of paperwork we'll have with this one."

"Yeah, and–" Castle began, but just then the radio in Ryan's pocket beeped.

The detective quickly took it out, releasing the "permanent transmission"-button.

"_Everything alright in there?"_ asked Lieutenant McDuff. _"You lot seem awfully merry."_

"All's peachy," Ryan replied, pressing the "speak"-button on the device. "But I'm afraid we'll need CSU in here."

"_Gonna be a while until they get here,"_ the Lieutenant said. _"You want us to stick around?"_

Ryan shot Beckett a questioning look, and she took the radio from him.

"I'd appreciate that, Lieutenant," she said. "The house is big, not to mention to grounds around it, and I'd just feel a little better if I knew someone was keeping their eyes open."

"_Alright, Detective,"_ came the reply. _"Anything else?"_

"No," she said. "Just send CSU in when they get here. Oh, and tell them to bring a lot of bags and boxes."

"_Roger."_

As she put the radio in the pocket of her coat, Castle started glancing around uneasily.

"What is it, Castle?" she asked.

He frowned, looking at her. "What about that butler guy?"

"What–" she began, then her eyes widened. _The butler. We totally forgot about the butler._

Now she remembered the tall, athletic looking man in the gray suit who had opened the door and let them in, telling them that Garving was in his study on the upper floor. She'd taken stock of him in passing, but had been too focused on the confrontation with Garving to really appreciate his presence. Now that she thought about it, she had to admit that he hadn't really looked like the typical butler, but more like…

"Kate!" Castle shouted.

She whirled around to face him, and in the same moment she felt more than she heard a bullet racing past her, missing her head only by a few inches. Her head moved further in the direction the shot had come from–the door, she noticed. She brought up her gun, but then Castle was in front of her, his big hands grabbing her shoulders as he tackled her.

Another shot went off, and she felt a shock travel through Castle and onto her just before she crashed down on her side. She struggled against his weight keeping her down and barely registered the two following shots. Only when silence settled over the room, she realized that Ryan had fired. She heard feet moving toward the door, then something being kicked across the wooden floor. Moments later, Ryan was kneeling next to her, his face hovering next to hers. And Castle's, she noticed.

"Hey, are you alright?" Ryan asked.

"I'm fine," she replied automatically. "Was it…"

"…the butler?" he finished her question. "Yep. Emphasis on _was_."

She tried to shift out from under Castle's arms. "It's alright, Castle," she told him. "You can let go now."

But Castle didn't respond. She shoved his shoulder. "Castle." Still no response. "Castle! Come on, this isn't funny." Nothing. Worry crept into her voice. "Castle?"

She wriggled around and managed to get her free hand up. Brushing the hair from his forehead, she searched his face. His eyes were closed, but she felt air rushing out of his nose in a regular pattern, and he was actually close enough that she could feel his chest expanding and deflating with every breath he took. She brought her hand to his neck, taking his pulse, and was relieved to find it strong and steady. So far he didn't show any sign of injury, if one discounted his unconsciousness.

"Ryan, take his head," she said.

"What?"

"I don't want to risk jostling his head, in case he's hurt his back," she explained. "And I can't really get both of my hands up."

"Ah, right," Ryan replied, moving around them. He set his gun down on the floor before he carefully slipped one arm under Castle's head, taking hold of his shoulder with his free hand.

"On three," Beckett said. "One, two–"

Before she could say "three", Castle let out a low groan. His brow creased and he clenched his eyes a little tighter shut than before, then slowly blinked them open.

Beckett held her breath.

"Ow," Castle muttered, the hand keeping Beckett trapped flying to his back.

She took the chance and wriggled out from under him. Ryan still kept one hand on Castle's shoulder to balance him, but pulled the other out from under the writer's head.

Castle groaned again, subtly arching his back. "I never thought that getting shot hurt like that," he said. His eyes searched Beckett's. "I think I've found a whole new appreciation for your toughness." His hand came up from his back, a little object held between his thumb and finger. "Bless the Kevlar," he added with a small grin.

A beat of silence passed between the three friends before they burst out laughing. It was as if they'd known that things hadn't been completely over with just Garving dead, but now they relaxed and let go of all the tension that had built up inside of them over the last couple of days.

Beckett was on her knees. With one arm wrapped around her stomach, she braced herself with the other as she drew shuddering breaths between bouts of laughter.

Ryan was sitting back on his heels, head leaning back, casting his laughter toward the ceiling.

Castle was on his hands and knees, laughing and heaving breaths like a child that had just survived a merciless tickle war.

They calmed down after a few minutes, and Beckett and Ryan helped Castle back to his feet.

"You should still get checked out," Ryan said, indicating Castle's back. "You'll probably get a big bruise."

The writer winced. "Feels like I've got one already."

Beckett punched him lightly in the arm. "Quit whining." She gave him a level stare. "And _never_ do that again. 'Kay?"

He returned her stare, his only response being the unspoken question in his eyes.

Ryan cleared his throat. "I'll, ah, be outside, if you guys need a moment."

"Yeah, thanks," Beckett said, not breaking eye contact with Castle.

She waited until she heard Ryan reaching the bottom of the stairs before she spoke again.

"Thank you."

"Always."

"You didn't have to, you know? I'm wearing a vest too, in case you've forgotten."

He opened his mouth to respond, but then closed it again. After a long moment of silence, he looked away, then walked over to the windows. The daylight had almost completely died away now, but there were no clouds, and the moon was clearly visible, casting a silver light upon the water. Waves lapped at the beach, falling back into the sea before they returned with new force. They were completely oblivious to what had happened only minutes ago inside this house, and they wouldn't have cared about either of the possible outcomes.

She joined him, looking out beside him. For a while neither spoke.

"You don't know how it was", Castle finally said, breaking the silence. "Seeing the flash from the rifle… _twice_… and still being too late." He sighed. "When you were back, I promised myself that I would never be too late again."

She was stunned. Really, truly stunned and at a complete loss for words. She knew that he blamed himself, just like she would had the roles been reversed. But hearing him say it like this, accompanied by the haunted look in his eyes that he now turned on her, was something entirely different than intellectually knowing. For the first time, she began to truly appreciate what her shooting had put him through.

Still unsure of what to say, she reached out and placed a hand on his arm. She tried to smile at him, but by the sad look on his face it didn't come out as she intended. After a minute of silence, he raised his free hand to cover hers.

Finally, she found some words, though as she said them, she was absolutely positive that those were not the words she should've been saying.

"Are you sure you're fine? I mean, you were unconscious, so you must have banged your head pretty hard… You could have a concussion."

"Nah, I'm fine," he replied, "no blurry vision and no trouble focusing." He looked directly into her eyes. "Nope, no trouble focusing at all."

She blushed slightly. _Stupid,_ she thought, _just stupid. Think, Kate._ And then she knew just what she needed to say.

She cleared her throat. No, she was not ready, not whole enough yet; she knew that. But she also knew that she was never going to be anywhere near whole enough if she didn't start healing properly. And that meant she needed to acknowledge what had happened. Esposito had told her that being damaged didn't make her weak, not unless she let it. And he'd been right. She had embraced the experience, made it a full part of her, and it had made her stronger. Not fine, but stronger.

But there was still more. There was still part of that day, that moment, that she had kept buried, hidden away as deep as she could, just so she wouldn't have to look at it. So that it wouldn't complicate her life. On an intellectual level, she knew that that was not the right way to deal with it. She knew that she wouldn't be able to move forward as long as she held onto that, held part of her past back. On an emotional level, her insecurities, her fears, had won out and kept the secret there. Until now.

Now she had faced an almost identical situation, but the outcome had, for all purposes, been reversed. For a short moment, she knew she had felt the same dread that he had half a year ago. And she couldn't really imagine living with that dread being so close to realized, and then having to keep it bottled up. Because she hadn't wanted to talk about it, hadn't wanted to acknowledge it.

_Stop blaming yourself,_ she chided. _You had your reasons. And besides, what's done… is done. _She drew a deep breath._ All you can do now is try to make up for it._

For a moment, she considered looking out of the window instead of at him, but dismissed that thought immediately. She wasn't going to chicken out now.

"Castle, there is… something… I need to tell you."

He just looked at her, displaying curiosity and maybe a little confusion in his eyes.

She went on, "The day… of my shooting… I remember it." She made sure to capture his gaze with hers before she said the next words. "_All_ of it."

He sucked in a breath, but remained quiet.

"I–I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say here, Castle, but…" She swallowed. _You can do this, Kate,_ she thought. _No, _I_ can do this._

"I'm through talking in riddles, and… and hidden meanings. I thought that… that being vague and not really saying what I mean to say would help me, make it easier for me to talk about things, you know? But the thing is… it doesn't. Not really, anyway. I feel… safer… when I don't say it out loud, but at the same time, I'm just treading water. I'm standing still, not moving forward. Not… I'm not healing that way. Not if I keep trying to deny what has happened. And that's exactly what I've been doing for the past six months."

He was still looking at her curiously, probably trying to figure out where she was heading. Although she thought that he knew well enough where this was going. He was the writer after all, the one who dealt in subtext and double entendre for a living.

"I've been avoiding it, I tried not to think about it, because it hurt. At first everything hurt, everything that reminded me of that day. Gradually it became better, but only in so far as I got better at blocking it out. It took me long enough to figure that out, and even longer to accept it. Hell, I'm not sure I really, completely accept it now, but I know that I should. And I know that I can only really heal if I acknowledge everything that has happened, even if that hurts for a while. Pain is part of the healing, or so I've heard…"

_Hurts? Pain?_ he thought. He'd been positively curious before, but he couldn't deny that her words scared him. For a brief moment he was wondering if she was aware that she was hardly doing any better than four months before on the swings.

She had the ability to evoke the greatest, most perfect images in his head just by being around him, which was the reason he'd "picked" her as his muse. That, and that he was fascinated by her personality. Now, however, the words she said to him only served to conjure up visions of dread. All he could think of was that he had misunderstood her, that she didn't really reciprocate his feelings for her, and that her knowledge of them was causing the pain she was speaking of now.

She could see his expression change, and she recognized the one that was taking over from experience. It was the one that she probably hated the most: the dread that appeared on someone's face once they realized that she was going to deliver them the worst news of their life.

She was unsure what it meant, but she was about to come to the core of her whole speech, and she was going to say it. If she wasn't doing it now, she figured, then she wouldn't ever do it.

"The only part that's left, that I've avoided until now, is what you said to me, Castle." She took as deep a breath as she could, hoping with all her might that he hadn't changed his mind, that she hadn't taken too long to make this choice. "You said that you loved me."

He deflated before her eyes, his face going through a strange mixture of falling a little further and lighting up at the same time. He squeezed her hand, opening and closing his mouth a few times, not finding the right words to reply to this.

Oh, he was happy, alright. Happy that she remembered, happy that she trusted him with it. He knew that opening up this much could not have been easy for her, and he appreciated it. But all the same, another part of him twisted in pain with the emotions on her face, the fear in her eyes, whose cause he could only guess at, mixed in with his own memories of the shooting. In a way, he realized, he had done just the same over the summer. He'd buried himself in his writing, poured everything in there, and then he rewrote the ending. He still wished he could have done so in reality.

She was scared now. Really scared, because she had no idea what the conflicting expressions on his face meant. Had he meant it then, but didn't he love her any more? She swallowed against the lump in her throat. She'd stared down the barrel of a gun, quite literally, a number of times and she had conquered her fear then. So she damn well could do the same now.

"I… I'm not whole, yet, Castle. I'm better than I was when I came back, but I'm still far from being whole. I'm far from the point where I trust myself to handle a… change… in our relationship. But I promise you that I'll be working on it, and if you're willing to–if you still want me, then… then I'll say it back, one day."

Now he smiled, truly smiled, his face threatening to split with the width of his grin. Gone were the confusion, and the pain, and in their stead was happiness. Happiness at his luck, at the knowledge that she, on some level at least, returned his feelings for her. At the promise that one day, she would fully do so. But most of all, he was blissfully happy to be here with her, both of them alive and well. The physical part, at least.

Slowly, while watching his smile grow wider and wider, her own lips quirked, then pushed her cheeks out of the way. Sure, she would have liked him to say it again, tell her that he still wanted her, but then, she thought, the way he smiled at her was confirmation enough that his feelings for her had not lessened in the least.

_If that alone makes me feel this… good… inside,_ she reflected, _then how's it gonna be when I'm ready for the real thing?_

…

"Damn cops," Smith cursed, slamming his fist on the desk. Everything was always black and white to them, just victims and suspects. In his eyes, they all lacked a sense for the bigger picture, for delicacy and politics.

Word of Garving's death had reached him in the early morning hours. The police had managed to keep the press out of the loop–or, actually, completely oblivious to what had happened–so far, which was the only slightly positive aspect about the situation, from his point of view. Everything else was a complete mess.

If they'd just kept their noses out of the case for now, he'd have been able to set his backup plan in motion… The final result would have likely been the same for Garving, because Smith would have made sure that Beckett went to confront him. For Smith, though, the result would have been completely different. Given six, maybe twelve months, he'd have been able to obtain enough information about some of Garving's key operations to contact his old employers and let them take care of things. That would have been preferable.

But with the news of Garving's death about to leak to the public in less than two days–he had no faith in the NYPD's capability of controlling the press–he knew that the people overseeing the operations would go off-grid. At least for a while. Consolidate their own, limited power and then resurface, maybe a year from now. Maybe in a different location, or maybe they were going to return to where they were now. In any case, they would be loath to work together, so anyone trying to get to them all would have a hard time.

Unless someone stepped into the void that Garving had left, to try to keep it all together. Alone, Smith had no idea who would be capable of doing that. He had seen Garving several times, and was sure that it was only thanks to the man's dominant and ruthless personality that his little shadow empire had existed for so long.

Smith sighed. Beckett and her colleagues might be celebrating victory and the closure of the single most important case of her life now, but they had no idea what their intervention had kicked off. And if things were going his way from now on, they never would. Sometimes, like now, he envied their ignorance.

_How nice their lives must be_, he thought, sighing as he pulled a couple of papers from a folder.

…

As Rick Castle unfolded the newspaper on Saturday morning, he only skimmed the front page, seeing as he already knew every detail about the story. The NYPD's press statement was surprisingly terse, giving barely more facts than Garving's background and that, during a routine interview, there had been a shooting, in the course of which Garving and his "housekeeper" had been killed by NYPD detectives. Not a word about what the investigation was about or how Garving was involved in it.

Naturally, the journalists were speculating wildly.

He didn't care much about that, though. He knew the truth.

Over the previous day, Beckett had kept him up to speed about every bit of development in closing the case.

Anthony Preston had been found dead in his hospital room around half past ten on Thursday night. The doctors had been unable to determine a cause of death, but the following autopsy hadn't turned up any hint of an unnatural death, so the official report listed "heart failure" as COD.

There had been no evidence of any kind in the house in the Hamptons, and Garving's apartment in Washington was outside of the NYPD's jurisdiction. That had been the subject of a rather animated conversation with Beckett on Friday afternoon, or rather how the case was being packaged to be handed over to the FBI. She had been very reluctant to let go of it, but eventually he'd managed to convince her that it was probably for the best. Garving was dead, and they knew that it had been him who'd ordered the hit on her mom. That is, they had no irrefutable proof that it had really been him, but all the evidence they had pointed to him and after the events at his beach house, neither of them doubted it. Leave it to the FBI to draw the missing lines between New York and Washington.

Beckett hadn't gone into further detail about what she'd told Gates concerning Karl Weston's identity. Castle assumed that she'd made something up, but even he couldn't come up with a convincing story, much less one that he believed Gates would buy. However, considering that Beckett hadn't been kicked out of the precinct and no uniforms had come to haul him in for an interrogation with the captain, he guessed that the story must have been good.

It had been a little weird for him, not being at the precinct for a whole day in this situation. It wasn't like he usually engaged in the wrap-up paperwork that had to be done for every closed case–he rarely ever did that. But in this case he had wanted to be there. He'd wanted to see this through until the end. Not to mention wanting to see Beckett. After hearing her confession, knowing that she knew how he felt and having her promise that she was working to reach a point where she could really be with him, it was the hardest thing in the world to not be around her.

But she had convinced him to stay home. To say that Gates was edgy was a gross understatement. Castle couldn't–and didn't want to–imagine the pressure that she had been getting from all sides. He wondered what was worse, that or being hassled by Gina when he was half a book behind with a week until the deadline.

In any case, he had seen the reason behind staying out of Gates' way, considering that she wasn't too fond of him in the beginning. He did _not_ want to be on the receiving end of her temper.

And maybe the little distance between Beckett and him wasn't too bad in the long run.

…

She called him around four in the afternoon, telling him that the FBI had just collected the last pieces of paperwork.

"So it's really over for us now?" he asked.

"Looks like," she replied. "We've given our statements already, so there's nothing more the FBI could want from us."

"And if they find something…?" he trailed off, leaving the actual question unspoken.

"I doubt it," she said. "I talked to Agent Shaw earlier. She's been assigned to the team, apparently the feds haven't found any evidence at Garving's apartment or office over in Washington. Now she is supposed to try to find out what he could have been involved in, where he could have kept evidence and so forth."

"Sounds like a tough job," he said. "But if there's no further evidence about anything, then–"

"Don't worry," she spoke over him. "We're not in trouble. IA completed their investigations for both the shooting at the precinct and at Garving's house, and cleared Gates, Ryan and me."

"Good." He paused, thinking.

"So…" she began.

At the same moment, he said, "Listen–"

There was a beat of silence, before she said, "You go first."

"No, you go first," he replied. "I insist."

"Okay," she said, "uhm… I was wondering if you were doing anything later. I… I don't really feel like spending time in an empty apartment right now… After this."

He let out a small laugh. "Funny, I was thinking almost the same thing. Alexis, Mother and I were going to order in for dinner… Do you want to come?"

"That sounds great," she replied. She paused for a second before continuing. "Would you mind if I brought Ryan and Espo along?"

"Of course not," he said instantly. "Hey, how about we turn this into a little celebration? Ryan could bring Jenny, and you could call your dad and Lanie…"

He could hear her smile even through the phone. "Perfect. When should we come?"

"Whenever you want. I'd say we order around six, that sound okay?"

"Yeah. See you in a bit."

…

At ten minutes to six the door bell chimed for the third time that afternoon.

"That'll be Lanie," Kate said, "finally."

Castle rose from his chair, leaving his partner and Jenny to open the door.

His mother and Jim Beckett sat at the kitchen island, keeping Alexis engaged in an apparently deep (and probably philosophical) discussion. His daughter seemed to hold her ground well against the two adults, judging from the confident smile that lit up her face.

Joy filled him while he watched her, pure happiness at seeing her alive and well. He didn't want to spoil the moment by remembering the terrible few minutes in Garving's study when he felt like his world was about to come crashing down around him. But he knew that that memory was going to haunt his dreams for a while, as it had since Thursday.

Ryan and Esposito were arguing animatedly about baseball. He hadn't really been following their conversation, but they were obviously at a point of total disagreement.

"No way," Ryan said loudly. "No, Javier."

"Oh yeah," the Latino countered, "you just watch and see."

Castle reached the door and opened it. Sure enough, Lanie was on the other side, but she wasn't alone.

"Castle," she said by way of greeting, a smile playing over her lips. "Look who I found in the elevator."

"Good evening, Dr. Parish," Castle said, smiling himself, before he turned to the other arrival. "And to you, Jake. Glad you could make it."

"Thanks for calling, Rick," Jake said, extending his left hand. His right forearm was wrapped up in a thick white bandage and strapped to his chest. "I'm not supposed to move it," he explained. "Much."

"That's right," said Lanie, while Castle shook Jake's left hand. "He described the stabbing. Honestly, he was lucky that no major artery was damaged."

Jake chuckled. "Yeah, I'm really lucky."

Castle stepped aside, gesturing for the pair to enter. After he closed the door, he turned to see that Kate had made her way over to the hall. She and Lanie were just disengaging from a hug when she took in Jake.

"Good to see you, Mr. Mansfield."

"Please, call me Jake," he said, offering his left hand again. She took it.

"Jake. I'm Kate." He nodded in response. "How's the arm?"

"It'll be fine in a few weeks," he replied.

As they ambled back to the living room, Castle caught Kate's arm, gently tugging her back. She stayed, a quizzical look on her face.

"Are you okay with him here?" he asked. "I forgot to tell you, but it didn't feel right leaving him out. Even though he's not, you know, part of the 'family'…"

"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked in return. "He may not be part of 'our family', but he saved Alexis' life nonetheless. He deserves to be here, Castle. And besides," she added after a moment, her eyes flashing strangely, "I kinda like him."

He knew he shouldn't ask, but he did anyway. At least he thought to temper the question with a grin. "Should I be worried?"

"How long have you known me, Castle?" She caught his hand, squeezing once. "I keep my promises."

Getting everyone seated around one table was practically impossible, so they ended up lugging the desk from Castle's study over to the dining area, arranging it end-to-end with the dining table. Procuring Castle and Alexis' desk chairs as well as one chair from each Martha's and the guest room, they managed to seat everyone, too.

They finished just in time for the food.

It was, as Alexis cheerfully informed the group, a "real Castle order-in-feast."

Which meant that there was everything, and lots of it.

Still, somehow Ryan and Esposito managed to get into a squabble over the spring rolls, at least until Lanie broke them up by snatching the second container from the other side of the table.

Jake took a slice of pepperoni pizza. Castle got up and went to the island, returning moments later with a glass of chillies. Kate chuckled as he offered them to her, but she declined. Jake took some, spreading them over his pizza.

When everyone had something on their plates and drinks in their glasses, Castle cleared his throat and stood.

"I'm sure you're all hungry, so I'll keep this short. You know what happened over the last week, so I won't bore you with recounting that, either."

"Hear, hear," Alexis interjected. "Are you losing faith in your incredible storytelling skills, dad?"

He narrowed his eyes at her in response. "What I mean is, the last week has been taxing and it ended with a bang. But at least it was a good bang. Sort of. Anyway, to get to the point… Now that the man who was responsible for Kate's mom's murder is gone, we can relax. Just for a moment. And while we do that – " he picked up his glass – "we should take a moment and remember those that are missing around this table. Those that, if it weren't for him, would be sitting here with us." He let his gaze wander around the table, locking eyes with everyone for a moment. He raised his glass and everyone stood, mimicking him. "To absent friends," he said, his words echoed in murmurs.

"I'd like to say something, too," said Kate. She paused for a moment, gathering her courage. "What ended – what ended on Thursday was the reason I became a cop. But I think I've… come a long way in those thirteen years. And a lot of that is thanks to you. Every one of you." She swallowed and looked down, but couldn't prevent a lone tear from trailing down her cheek. When she looked up again, a smile graced her lips. "I guess what I'm trying to say is… I miss my mom, and I always will, but I'm still glad to be here and to be able to call you my friends." She chuckled, then locked eyes with her father. "Mom would throw a fit if she were here," she said softly. "She'd tell me to stop living in the past, to start looking forward and get on with my life."

Jim nodded, his expression caught somewhere between serious, astounded and maybe a little bit happy. He managed a smile. "Yes, she would."

Kate cleared her throat. "To life, in all of its facets. And to living it."

She shared a look with Castle, and they clinked their glasses together, smiling.

* * *

><p><strong>AN (the second): hope you enjoyed it. I hate to bother you, but I'd like to know how this ending sits with you. You'd be doing me a favor if you could give me a line or two (or more, if you please) of feedback about it. :)**


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